Christopher Clauss
Alone With This Chill
Alone in the airport chapel
scrolling through messages
not frequent enough
I never thought I would lose
you
This divide of us,
This sickness killing you
Me picturing a life
in your absence
The nerves misfiring
and recalling
things we dismissed
as permanent
my thoughts reminding me of
how wrong I was
under The last remnants of
reveling in our youth
when we thought ourselves forever friends
Pancreatic cancer
an eternity
that I can not muscle through
at all hours, a prayer we utter
now that
The time we have
will pass
before we know it
Your withering form sunken into
too easily
visible bones
now
I don’t want
for this to be the end, this
never knowing
whether this time
myself as we say farewell whether it will be
the very last time we speak
You told me once about my calling to bear
our memories. Reluctant, I press a knuckle
this fist to my temple, and the memory leaves
This bitter chill
reminds me my calling
was never to betray
our silence just to knuckle
down, to cross
the frozen leaves
This walk leaves
a bone-deep chill
up the arms, cross
my body calling
every arthritic knuckle
to betray
my weakness as I betray
the serenity of the leaves
the way my footprints knuckle
the frozen foliage, a chill
for which no one was calling
so today I bear this cross
I am just sad, not cross
with God, as each tear betrays
the stoicism, calling
out to each of the fallen leaves
that they fall too in this chill
smeared with a knuckle
too quick to notice, a knuckle
dragged across
a cheekbone where it will chill
and drop, silent, never to betray
their space among the leaves
becoming one with the soil, their true calling
Others lingering, their calling
card a moistened knuckle
the loss it leaves
hangs heavy, and I cross
back beneath your tree betraying
the warmth I miss in this chill
The joy in this life, not a cross
sinking into the earth, I will not betray
myself, alone with this chill.