Sequences

She waits and he does not return.

His absence is re-discovered in so many places.

The shirt hanging on the nail seeks to organize itself around the 
	idiosyncrasies of his shoulders.  

It is with trepidation that any new drawer is opened or package
	explored for fear of discovering this absence once again poised
	like a marble sized black hole sucking into its immense weight
	the light and energy by which a meal was to be prepared or a
	book read.

A recording of Dvorjak's New World Symphony yields beauty as is
	wholly desirable yet the sound seeks his ears who loved it so
	and failing to discover that particular receptivity generates
	once again the absence -- absence that clings to each note like
	anti-matter -- and is carried into every niche on ripples of
	disturbed air thereby creating a vast unseen counter-universe.

In the early morning hours she wakes and in spite of all she knows 
	listens for the particular night noises he made while sleeping.

Like a child whose friend is called home before anyone began to 
	tire of hide and seek which as we who remember know is best 
	just at dusk when we can lose and re-discover one another in so 
	many running and joyful ways she knows that he will not be
	re-discovered tonight which is to say not ever for what child
	even though she remembers what her mother said believes in
	tomorrow? 

She seldom sits on the deck overlooking the lake anymore.

One of the baby loons is missing this summer.

They think it may have been dragged under and eaten by a snapping 
	 turtle.  

Only a week before I paused to contemplate a scene in a show-case in
	the Bangor airport depicting just such an event -- the turtle's
	gaping mouth poised in photographic stillness at a distance of
	utmost tension from the baby loon's webbed foot. 

"Be here now" the sage tells us yet only in photographs and display 
	cases is there any now that can be depended upon to be what it 
	is whereas actuality is always wave-like realizing itself only
	in sequences through time.

She does not wish to not find the loon on a lake that is already 
	saturated with absence.  

Always she waited for him Penelope-like in the time honored tradition      
	in which women of old waited for their sea-faring men in
	fearful anticipation and though such waiting is no longer in
	style and is even considered to be perhaps a little demeaning I
	honor her still for this. 

His indifference to the suffering of the fish distressed her seeming
	as it did to her incongruous with his gentleness this being but
	one small vein in a subtle network of tensions and differences
	that ran through their relationship like imperfections running
	through polished turquoise.  

She grieves also for this.  

"Now" is never a self sufficient thing but is always finely sculpted
	by past hurts and future anticipations.  

We find ourselves always now in the middle of a sentence the meaning
	of which was begun several words ago and is completed only by
	words not yet uttered.  

-- This was the moment before...

-- This was the last time...

-- I would never have guessed...

Wave like. 

It is because now is sculpted by a new sequence that she seldom sits      
	on the deck anymore:

-- She waits and he does not return.

-- She waits and he does not return.  

Wave like.

Everywhere she lives this sequence yet it seems more difficult 
 	 overlooking the lake where she remembers so many evenings when
	 she waited knowing that he was out there somewhere tinkering
	 with his lines.

Having lost and re-discovered him in so many running and joyful ways
	she cannot now be consoled, 

For she does not believe in tomorrow.