ELEGY Poem: Aesthesia, by Billie Jean Stratton

I remember his eyes seeing more than they could,
as if the right sight might surround and slow down time,
and mine catching hold of the secret way he would
grasp to mold his most elusive possession, life.

We used to sit staring side by side on the porch.
The day’s soft, steady fade for the moon’s sudden torch
always amazed me. Such changes remained behind:
hide and seek, do-see-do creek, gold I couldn’t find.

The scene seemed real enough, until one day I saw
the light’s slight lean, as if some subtle shade was drawn,
like walls, so paper thin, they hardly stop the wind,
the sheer sound round the realm we lived and breathed in.

He claimed an afterlife in nature was his fate.
I picked the distance apart; my eyes logged on late.
The summer a never-ending sorrow weighed in,
seated, sobbing, suddenly I saw his vision:

the hills, a man’s face, silent sentinel of space.
It looked so much like him; I think his mind did win.