On a whim…

I have hung my harp upon the years, yet in every wind that passes, I hear her name.

• from the journals of exile

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept;
we hung our harps upon the willows.”
— Psalm 137 : 1-2

I.
By the waters of memory, I sat down and wept,
And hung my harp on the limb of the years.
The wind in the reeds made a sound like forgiveness,
But it wasn’t forgiveness I heard — it was fear.

II.
Regret is a carrion bird, circling slow,
Feeding on grief that refuses to die.
Its shadow falls long over everything holy,
And whispers, you could have loved better than I.

III.
It never flies lonely — recrimination comes near,
A beast in the dark with a tongue made of blame.
They feast on the bones of what memory offers,
And leave me the echo, the ache, and the name.

Refrain
It wasn’t the box but the silence that fed them,
The years I mistook for the comfort of peace.
Now I open my hands and the feathers fall upward —
They vanish like breath, but the hunger won’t cease.

IV.
I walk through the hush where her laughter once stood,
Through the door that no heartbeat will open again.
And I hear from the willow the faintest of music —
A string half-broken still answering pain.

Coda
By the waters of memory, I sat down and wept,
And hung my harp on the limb of the years.
The song that I lost is the one that still finds me,
And silence itself is the sound that I fear.