In memory of Andrea


I would arrive at the office
stuffed into my lackey persona,
contorted into the shape
of that cold
corporate box with its
tyrannical clocks
and manufactured
greetings . . .

almost audible chains
dragging what was left of
my will,

knowing somewhere a monarch
was tucking into a
newly-hatched wildflower,

drinking beauty,
drinking life,
drinking surrender . . .

we should all love and
be loved like that,
we should all be created
again and again
like that,

and you made it happen,

even under the
all-seeing
mock-sunlight above
cubicles and a computer
waiting to lobotomize me,

even there,
something sweetly human
would fall
through the roof and
my reassembled real self
would believe again:

every act of kindness is worship,
all ground touched by peace
is holy—

you were the prayer I couldn't
quite think of when even
the idea of God was a
universe away,

and even with glass wings
you lifted me,
even in pieces you gathered
my own scattered heart.

Now the plaster air molds
this one stubborn moment into
stillness all around.
Persistent, dour ash trees
sprinkle sun like the
high priests of summer,

but they cannot shade
the scorch
of the absence of you.

Certainly you fly now
from star cities and
crackling myths
to quantum lands within

while our minds are still
somehow in lockstep,
in wonder,
wordless and brighter than
any pearled conversation,
and all I can say is:

You packed the
essentials.

What you took with you
is also what
you left behind—
something very close
to Heaven
and never truly gone.


Patricia Joan Jones