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Simeon

Sim #1

Waiting for our dead baby’s body
to exit my wife’s body
He is still so near
He remains in her
and often just next to me
carried around as if worth carrying
still fragile and possible
as if already on his way to life
to be lost and found again
in the way that life demands
all the tools he would need
to weather heroically the tides of fate
already in place

Did the tiny heart ever flutter awake?
Was its pace set for such a short time?
Or was it something I said, she felt, we did?
At some point, gave up or given up, it stopped--
the beats slowly weakening
into one final flutter to wave goodbye
or was it sudden?

The boy Simeon, eight years from now,
would have had plenty of playmates,
his old dog, Dag, closest in age,
Autumn the dominant and the doting Nell
And Dennis, the idolized big brother, most distant in age
But ever-closer with time.
Where would I have hurt him by then?
Short-sighted and struggling to make ends meet
His mother and I continually fighting tooth and nail
To stay in love...

Did you take him from us because we weren’t ready?
Because his unsoiled soul’s intercession on our behalf
Was more urgent than his growing up in this world? in this home?
Were we simply unable to welcome him?
Overwhelmed as we are these days?

Last night I went to bed and realized again with a shock,
Even just after writing about it,
That he was inches away--that close!
Only my wife’s body, the wall between us
Only the other side of life now separating us
And the Buddha would say even that
Separation is only an illusion
And yet he is dead, gazing upon God,
And I persist in the complicated compromise
That is the heartbreak and wonder of this world

Does he truly pray for me now?
Has my dead father already delighted in him?
In his unmistakability
In his definitiveness, in his unique personhood
Does my father recognize in the twinkle of Simeon’s soul
The same traces in his own?
Do they both together see it in me, buried as it is and bleeding,
And pray for its rising?
--my father keenly aware of the difficulty inherent in such a task
to live in this car-crash world,
and Simeon, the unblemished, at his side,
keenly aware of the perfections of God
and glorifying his timelessness--
And I, with the burden of today and tomorrow on my shoulders,
hurting in ways I’m not even aware of...

Ah, Simeon, my love,
I couldn’t even let myself long for you!
How could I be such a fool?
What conditions created this?
What can be done in the face of such a tragedy?
Not so much your death
as my impoverished experience of it
that I should be living and empty,
turning away to turn toward a welcomed numbness,
while you, my love, go without.

The resurrection of the body has its reasons
and I will miss your physical presence when it’s gone,
but the Super Bowl is today
And somehow you’re part of that
Somehow in the fleeting, transient happiness
I feel at the thought of it,
Even in the distraction it is
From the thought of the loss of you,
My child.



Sim #2

I try to sit with the pain, but it’s still pain I sit with.So, when the bell rings, the animal in me is hungry for distraction--even one in which sadness is replaced by diminished sadness. Vaguely aware that perhaps this could all catch up with me, I’m slightly perturbed, as I approach the stairs leading to Rm. 501, by the thought of who might emerge at the top of this flight. I’m a professional, after all, as well as whatever you’d call the inversion of an orphan. These two identities must take turns.

Step one and suddenly your name is on my lips. Step two and it’s there again. By the second flight, I’ve taken the cue and consciously joined this irrational yet delicious repetition of your sweet, tender name...Simeon, Simeon, Simeon...step-by-step.The sheer spontaneity of it defying any logical explanation--so that the usual toil and tug of teaching, awaiting my momentary arrival on the second floor, is suddenly deepened into a newness of pure possibility.



Sim #3

One explanation for this tragedy, losing you:
is that you have a backstage pass now.
You have access
And so I have access
to you, as your father.
You have a certain obligation to listen, don’t you?
--the 4th commandment and all--

After death, these things go on,
above as below.