Completing the Circle: Final Day

This is the final part of my poem cycle Inside the Circle, dedicated to Mil Lubroth. To read from start to finish, scroll to the first post titled Inside the Circle, below.


Tuesday, the 8th day

 

What remains is a circle drawn

by you, one in which so many of us stand—

family and friends, students and teachers,

beret-wearers and Scottish dancers, speakers of

languages, builders of bridges, cigarette-smokers

and diplomats, research librarians, makers of good art

and some not so good, hobby philosophers, household help,

foreign correspondents, starry-eyed expatriates,

the famous and the not, a poet or two, and other

assorted “strangers in a strange land.”

The flower of you is gone, but the seed of all you

were stays planted in our hearts, warmed by memory,

watered by laughter and tears, forever growing in love,

that full-forever-circle state-of-being that

knows no, has no end. 

*

You’ve left your circle for us, as you move

one circle farther on – “practically next door” –

and though I cannot say or know or even dream how this can be,

I know you will move with us and within us

as we must now move on. It’s true:

It isn’t possible for You

to be gone. 

According to the circles

in the calendar,

it is time now   

to turn

            the page

                             with love –

*******

Image: Brisa Nocturna by Mil Lubroth, all rights reserved

Text: Ysabel de la Rosa, all rights reserved.