In Reverant Remembrance

I met you in late summer
as the seasons of your life go.
Your spring had brought the seed
from which later I did bloom.
And so the summer came,
and in the fields of youth I played.
Beneath the daytime star that was your smile,
and your voice the gentle wind,
the laughing breeze that stirs the strong, gnarled boughs,
so like your arms as they once held me.

Then summer came to close.
The wind blew colder, fiercer,
and the leaves began to fall.
It was in that fateful autumn that I began to fear.

Autumn turned to winter,
and buried dead leaves in snow,
buried you in the soil of our memories.
Your end had come, your life full circle,
and now you slumber softly,
beneath earthen sheets.
And with your somber passing,
the generations that bear your name and legacy
gather together to recall the seasons come and gone.

Though here do I sit silently,
beneath this leafless tree,
this lifeless tree,
beneath this cold grey sky,
I listen to the wind and cast my eyes up high
in hopes that I might hear your voice,
or see the sun rise just once more.

As a man I knew you only as you were to me,
and in that I know there can be no greater
who ever walked this earth.
Your path has split from mine and taken you from sight,
and though I know not where it leads
and that I cannot follow,
I hope someday that mine will cross with yours again.
And I will lie once more in summer
under the white-haired sky
lit up once again by your smile,
and all the greenest leaves and grass will sway
in the chuckling summer breeze.
When I hear you tell your tales again,
from your lap the way I used to
in that season past.

So as I sit here silently,
beneath this leafless tree,
this lifeless tree,
writing on this drop-stained page,
I speak again those final words.
Not the last that I did ever speak to you,
but the last that you did hear.
To the empty air I whisper:
“I love you, Grandfather.”