Singing Kaddish for Anna

(in memory of my mother, dedicated to my father)

    

All night long, my bedroom glowed
golden with the light of street lamps
through opened window blinds,
through the sash I’d cracked
to let the cool night air flow in
and the deep breathes of sorrow out.
All night long wasted on sleep
that wouldn’t come whilst listening
to thoughts that couldn’t stem
the stream of time into a river
greater than mine . . . A half-state
neither here nor there, beyond
the great windowed wall that once
sieved our lives into moments,
vignettes from the theatre of us,
that history only now defines.
All night confined to one such moment,
hearing the whimpers of the dog
whose fall into sleep has sent him
into a run across imagined fields;
no one else here to sing
the lullabies you once carried
like water: fluid even
within confines of a melody
I can’t quite remember
but don’t want to forget.