Elegy, Upon a Drop of Rain

to my beloved grandfather, Paul Eugene Lawrence (Oct. 31st, 1935 – Dec. 9th, 2015)

requiescat in pace

the curving gesture of this ink contains

the solitary witness to the long

and gaping night that passed away like rain,

its dissipating shapes, in darkness drawn

where countless moments disappear’d inside

a void from which they’ll never be retrieved:

the silence closes seamlessly behind

a sound that now can never be perceived

its absence, no amount of ink could fill

nor trace the way each absence has become

the spring from which our presence spills—

or how this darkness differs from another one