The world forgets

The world is beyond my description
no power can take from its grasp
the flood of a sliver of sunlight
between the tall trees, or the rasp
of foam on the sand covered lakeshore
caught up in its battering spray
no, nothing is deep as the darkness
nor kind as the day.

And soon in the riotous springtime
when hawthorn shall flower, and blooms
alight every branch, and the lilies
grow dappled within gentle gloom;
when night shall be filled with the bruising
of dew on the grass, and the trees
then I shall imagine the glories
you must once have seen.

The world moves beyond all enduring
you left, as the stars when the sun
first rose overhead and the dawning
of all that we know was begun.
You left, as the spring turns to summer
the hawthorn to green, and the stars
are shifting the hearts of their patterns
we traced from afar.

Now all that is left is the longing
and words that can never express
the depths of your world, nor its beauty
nor even its torturous deaths.
The songs of the fountains, the stories
carved out on the shores from the waves
they do not remember the dying
or passing of days.

They will not remember the lifetime
you spent on this wondrous earth;
not all your swift days, nor the moment,
the first that you had, of your birth.
For even the trees are forgetful
of all not inscribed in their rings
and you were not droughts, nor a rainstorm
nor even a spring.

The world does not share in my yearning
for souls that are gone to the dark
of fathomless depths beyond number
that take those we've known far apart.
But I still enjoy every season
and sing to the birds overhead;
the world may not stop, nor my longing
for those who are dead

and though in this world there is nothing
to say, that can fully express
the depths of the grief that encumbers
the pace of my struggling breaths
then still, I shall look, write, and wonder
at all of the world you once knew
and though all the words I write falter
at least they are true.