I Don't Know What To Call This One, But It's For You

The city lights dim
and the wind sweeps through the streets
moving dust under our feet.

A man on the lonely corner
plays the saxophone
and I wish you were here.
These times,
they were made for you,
as my friends would say,
Tailor-Made.
We pull out a pack
and everyone reaches for one
but we all have our favourites
and you were ours.
In this world,
but not of it,
you existed.
You stood,
a proclamation of the beauty
that must somehow lie beyond,
far beyond our understanding
or grasp.
Just a bit too far beyond yours.

You gave us hope of this beauty:
it was so much in you.
And this reality is still so far above me.
I can’t understand.

You touched life in us.
(In me)
You made it worth living.
You brought life itself alive.
If only you could have seen.
The animation of your own life
overflowed,
trickled down into lives
beyond your realisation.
The days rejoiced in you
and you in them.
You lit up the world with the warm glow
of a single smile.
You could make anything funny,
you could make anyone laugh,
and you did.

A life too short,
adoration overdue.
And what now?

I’ve been told that
if nothing else,
life is a grand symphony.
We come,
we play
and we fade.
And if this is so
I want you to know
that you played your part beautifully
like no one else ever could.
And the rhythm of your life
and the legacy you began
will play out in the harmonies
you once gracefully introduced
and the melody with which you helped cure
a dying world.

The sun lights up the coming day,
and I feel myself fight
the prospect of a day without you in it.
We fight
the passage of time
which carries us inevitably
away from you.
I cling desperately to the lingering essence
of a world with you
in the mists of smoke,
to little avail.

Maybe I have it all wrong,
and I hope I do,
and maybe time doesn’t matter
and in the ebb and flow of memories
we’ll find peace,
comfort,
even joy
within the suffering.
Joy in the celebration
of a life lived
so fleetingly,
yet so beautifully,
a miracle to us all,
forever changed.

It’s so inadequate.
None of this,
no words
will,
can,
ever express every thought
and every emotion
you inspired
and stirred
in every one of us,
and what they meant,
and what they mean,
and what they will continue to mean.
All I can come back to
is the beauty that is beyond us,
and the grand role that you played
in helping us to see it.

The city lights are lost in the soft touch of the sun,
and the wind sweeps through the streets,
moving dust under our feet.