February 21: Loss, Billy Collins, "All Eyes"

So many people I know have experienced loss in the last couple weeks.  I lost my dad.  A good friend lost her sister.  Tonight, another friend lost his mother-in-law.  I am tired of death.

Tonight, I have no words of comfort that will work, because I know that nothing I say will take away any of the pain that accompanies the loss of a someone you love.

Instead, I offer this poem by Billy Collins.  It's about death, but it's also about life.  It's about my dad.  My friend's sister.  My other friend's mother-in-law.

Saint Marty can hear his father's voice in this poem . . . 

All Eyes

by:  Billy Collins

Just because I'm dead now doesn't mean

I don't exist anymore. 

All those eulogies and the obituary

in the corner of the newspaper

have made me feel more vibrant than ever.

I'm here in some fashion,

maybe like a gust of wind

that disturbs the upper leaves,

or blows a hat around a corner,

or disperses a little cloud of mayflies over a stream.

What I like best about this 

is you realizing you can no longer

get away with things the way your used to

when it would be ten o'clock at night

and I wouldn't know where you were.

I'm all ears, you liked to say

whenever you couldn't bother listening.

And now you know that I'm all eyes,

looking in every direction,

and a special eye is always trained on you.