And then for a time it is just the sound of the dog licking an empty bowl

I’ve turned out all the lights so the coming dawn can fill every room

and why do we say, “I’m filled with loss”

when loss is an absence

should it be more,

“the loss reveals how big the empty space is in me”

and that’s what fills us,

a reminder of what once was

how life would never truly reveal itself

until maybe the end:

what makes it so peculiar, so wondrous,

its mystery reserved for a day we’d see it as an accumulation

of indescribable pain and beauty

cut like a diamond with all its facets and angles of light —

I give thanks now for the space it has made in my heart,

for the weight in what I have

and stand to lose,

for the gratitude that grows with age,

and all that waits

to reveal itself.

Categories: death, poetry, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, existentialism, identity, mid-life crisis, nostalgia, pacific northwest, poem, poetry, William Pearse writer