Dawning Creations

I find myself in the shadows of your thoughts, thinking on about you, thinking of me too, in the place you now recognize as home.

I find myself in the quiet still of the woods.
Grandma’s woods I come most alive, finding myself among the solitude of the Russian cemetery,
crawling along with the clanging, dragging chains.
I can feel their heaviness, their calm.
I find myself searching for your name among the ranks.
I find myself remembering your harmonica, your guitar and your fragility in old age.

I find myself, eight years old, my feet crunching in the fresh snowfall.
The wind whips through me, aging my limber body to a somber, slower thirty in an instant.

I find myself when I’m laughing, living and loving.
I find myself when you smile, your eyes crinkling with your booming laughter.
I missed so much as the months drug themselves forward.
Their nails left  painful imprints in parallel crimson remnants.
I missed you and the life you lived before.

I find myself when you return and we transform gloomy winter to a wonderland.
Humor and wonder beguile us in our shared imaginations.
I find myself in you reminding me of it all.
The good, the sad and the very ugly are all a part of who we are now.