Don’t waste your pity on the one gone.
If she was awake, she’ll stick around –
a milkweed pod now burst open
and blown by the wind. She is
everywhere at once, untamable.
Hear her voice, still laughing.

Even the one unawake, the soul barely
cracked out of it’s tight-fisted shell,
merely sleeps through the next life,
to be wakened gently in time for the
resurrection. If I were God, that’s how
I’d design it, and surely God has
a bigger heart than mine.

For the ready-made angel,
there are several jobs
for which she’s been
training all her life:
imaginary friend of only children,
prophetess to taunted adolescent,
keeper of lovers gone but not forgotten,
keeper of hope in countries not forsaken,
witness to the small kindness,
profligate spender of praise

Too shy to sing, she’ll stand behind,
elbows jutting like pointy wings, and
chiding: “You don’t have to eat all
the problems of the world in one bite.
Digest a little first, it will keep.”

She will tell you that you are
an otherworldly being,
a leap in a new evolution,
a translator of birdsong.
She will ask to skywrite
your poem in the clouds.
It will be harder to believe
without her voice, but your ego
never lies this extravagantly.

In fact, dare I say, bless
the passing that releases the one
that we would hoard and keep.
As spirit, she covers the earth,
relaying our message of love
more reliably than words,
which often confuse what we mean.
Small and nimble, she is everywhere,
willful and fierce, at last.
The horizons dimple her smile.
Share her unquenchable delight.

~ Tereza Coraggio