Your voice has gone silent, the echoes have faded. The light of your eyes is forever, now, shaded. I’m left with a great gaping hole in my heart, While my life endures, we have been thrust apart. The tears well up thickly and my vision blurs. I have trouble breathing, the problem recurs. You must be in bliss, that’s my hope and belief, But now I must stagger, alone with my grief. We stole priceless hours and shared a pure joy, But such are the flowers one frost can destroy. The joyous sweet time that we shared was a boon I was not prepared when the bill came so soon. Your life was so fraught with such burdens and pain, I begged

(For Mavra) Each day a new self leaves the old one behind. Some aspects are lost, riven, fixed or refined. And now I am altered, as if stricken blind, My world is now solely within my own mind. My body’s borne burdens with more aches and pains, It lies weakened now, but my duty remains. It seems that other parts of me can suffer sprains, A blood vessel’s burst in my stroke-weakened brains. Cancer once gripped me, made me weak and ill; Left scars seen and unseen, I bear them all still. And now a new illness moves in for the kill. The weapon last left me, my weakened, mute will. That will cannot make half my body respond. I figh

I draw at night Using memories of light In the hope that the sight Of my work will please. The things that I draw Every marvel, or flaw In my mind's eye I saw With joyous ease. You behold, you might, then praise. I draw more both nights and days... You share ideas, And I trap them with lines, Adding colors and shade To give them form. If my work is skilled, You behold, and are thrilled And the two of us filled With thoughts that warm. What shall I draw here and now? I imagine... Draw it how? I sit erect, Take my tablet in hand For my visions demand I trap them now. I know what I see, How can I make it be What I strenuously Trace with