Halloween.

The day when separation

between the worlds

is at it's frailest.



Just so for me

and for my father

who will not live

who has not died.



He flickers like a wind-blown flame

disappearing for a moment

only to flare again

defying the deepening October night

with all the power that is Life



In him, the Spark is strong.

All the tenacity

of eons of continuity

found focus there.



But Life is passed along.

The flame devours the fuel

and then moves on.

We live,

but none of us are Life

in whole.



Yesterday it fell to me to say that we would not push forward.

Not further torture his futile body.

I will let him die.

This, I know, is right,

and am told so, on every hand, by doctors, nurses, friends.

By my own eyes.

But my heart holds to an illusion of hope,
fueled by a momentary apparition of his former self,

surfacing amid the flotsam of delusion.

His and mine.



His burial ground will be elsewhere,

but his spirit I will tend here, in my Arboretum,

and Life will not be a false hope.