ON THE DAY YOU DIED
for Dennis Walsh, a faculty colleague

On the day you died,
the goddess of morning opened her eyes
and showered the east wall
of the University Chapel
in warm-yellow light.
A parade of dark birds
with quick shadows
appeared, cartwheeling
across that stage
of illuminated, holy stone.

From our office window I watched all this
without a word;
my body, a hollow chamber,
my thoughts erased by the terrible news,
our meetings now, forever cancelled.

And when it seemed the aerial procession had passed
one bird returned;
a lone flyer, arcing back and forth, and back again
torn, between the place from which it had come and the place
to which it was bound.
I held my breath,
my heart, like those considering wings, pumped harder,
even time waited
for the bird to choose.

The, the wind stirred
like a hearty laugh, a good story, or
a single tear, sliding from the cheek of one who loves,
one who knows it is over,
and the bird turned.
With a slow deliberate beating of wings
that lone dark shape grew small before the sky,
and I, still standing at the office window…
well, all I could say, was
“Go.”

Catherine Johnson
dated Oct. 2002