Goodbye

“Goodbye”

What is Hello?
Who are these Goodbyes?
I have met many in my travels
From one salutation to one parting.
But this. This goodbye is a bitter foe,
For he is delayed in his approach.

From one rest to another sleep,
He waits in the margins…
Drawing near, but never touching.
And though I know I must taste it,
I cannot bring my lips to such wine:
The bitterness of the fruit
Of my obeisance is far too sweet.

A shadow that comes and goes and knows
It never should have departed the sun
While all our separate skies were aflame with calamity
Falling like a weariness upon the monuments to be.
We may have escaped without a parting
Rising to our shades as they joined the night:
They may have disappeared into the canvas of decay…
Or they may have wedded the darkness that bears such stars
As went sighing into abysses in the unknown eons before—
They live still in our sky…and beneath their spectral light
Our shadows never departed…
…though, “Farewell” awaited our whispers.

Ah! He is bitter. So bitter. For though we reach
Our hands do not touch—and I have left this place
Bearing the next salutation of the same pain
That walks in spaces where all should be echoes,
That haunts like a ghost where no phantoms dwell…
Always on the edge of a greeting that should be “Farwell.”

© 2022 Marten Hoyle