A week in the world without you

I wonder if you would care, your missing so evident in my everyday world already. The last poem I sent, the last picture. the last ping I asked you to acknowledge. So I put your name here and hope that the skies are full of the stars we watched so many times. I will count every night that they allow. 

Poem for the son who has turned away

I can’t capture birdsong
or the draft that hawks
ride over just-mown fields.

As blackbirds pepper
the clouds – west to east mornings
east to west of an afternoon –

I pause to listen to the wave
of wings; their cries
soft bells against the leaden sky.

Hardness washes
my heart like the particular howls
of dogs, their sleep erased

by a siren’s piercing scream.
A lonely wail and echo
until all is silent again.