by Robert M. Mendonsa

For Ken

Your shade is lost, drifting alone
     Amid forgotten waves that break
Against shores distant and forgone.
     Lost echoes, their tolling,
Incarcerated undertones–
     Cut off in a void, worlds apart,
Leaving behind only this gravestone.

Remnants stand together in a field, still,
     Yet I am so utterly alone,
Standing here while the stones crumble into nothing,
     Leaving shapes coalesced from dust and bone.
Fading, the black riptide drags the ash into the earth,
     Receding into the unknown,
Trapping darkness in this heart
     Grappled by a raging cyclone.

But for me to reach and grasp
     Or rake and gasp,
At what little fragments of you remain left,
Will leave me behind
Only to find
     That pain is all hands can heft.

Yet it is there I will scan
     What was once that of a man,
Remembering our time long past;
     As my core dullens to an ache,
While my grip on the memories break,
   I am freed from the dark tide at last.