If You are Gone
If you are gone, then why do the flowers bloom,
how dare the petals peep from green leaves growing.
What from the earth pushes through into the light?
If you are gone, what fish swim the waters deep,
what birds slice the air with soaring?
Who walks the pathless trails?
If you are gone, where is the music of rustling leaf,
of running brook, of deer crunching twigs in woods.
Who breaks the silence of day and calls for the setting sun?
If you are gone, who calls the dogs, who whistles them in,
who looks out over the pond for herons prancing?
Who watches the hummingbirds sip red nectar in mid-air?
If you are gone, how do the stars pass time in the darkness,
how does the moon tips its head and shine over all the earth?
Who shares the sun’s rising, the shaking off of sleepy on the morning dew?
If you are gone, how do the seasons pass?
Who invites the Spring and warns the winter? Who leads
Autumn in by the warming hand and breezes Summer to its place?
If you are gone, who hastens when I call your name, what heart
will stir the fires of home, who will be here waiting.
If you are gone, I’ll take your love and divide it evenly
among the trees and rocks and rivers
the rabbits and the Beagles and the sky.
Our memories will not be wasted, time will sprinkle
them over every breaking dawn, every lightning bolt,
every rainbow streamer breaking blue.
You may be gone, but I am not alone.
by Teresa McLamb Blackmon
January 16, 2011
