Does time embrace existence or existence time?
Revelation implies the latter, but can I believe it?
(revelation being something I neither have nor covet).
Without that, can I stand outside time?
May I think, as I need to think, that because one
existed so strongly, warmly, and is now gone,
her existence is more real still, now and here,
than this meaningless cessation I do not share?
Autumn is here and lovely,
the season she loved most.
An extra twist that she should die
in high summer, this autumn lost.
Her own summer already past
but winter not yet come,
what this death blasted
was her autumn.