In memory of my son Davin Villarreal who passed away July 11, 2019
He drove off,
not knowing,
death’s coachman
would take the wheel
and collect what was on loan.
He didn’t know
death cheats at cards,
would draw five aces,
and reveal the revelation
of what happens when we die.
With the mystery unsealed,
that sacred secret,
was placed upon
his silenced lips,
what lies beyond unfolds.
In an instant he was gone.
His body,
melded and meshed
into metal and wood.
That bastion of leaf and limb still stands,
and he does not.
His spirit cast-out from his body
like Adam from the garden,
never to return,
until the trumpet blast
of judgement day.
He rests in a copper coffin
beside his grandfather’s grave.
He went there often
to ponder the old man’s wisdom.
And I will visit his,
to ponder what might have been.
No answers for the unnaturalness,
that a son should pass, before his father.
Now I see glimpses of ghosts,
and hear the wisps and whispers
of fond recollections of what was.
I see him in the child holding tightly
to a father’s hand,
like his in mine,
once upon a time.
I see him in the tales told by parents,
first words, first steps, first day of school.
In the loneliness of a sleepless night,
in the stillness of my dim-lit room,
I see him faintly from the corner of my eye.
I hear him in the laughter of his daughter.
I hear “No Papa!”
When I steal a sinful bite of something sweet.
I see him, I hear him, but I cannot hold him
or slap him on the knee.
When he was a child, I would peak in
and find him in peaceful sleep.
I’d say goodnight,
but there is no hearing
no awareness,
no sight or sound
in the silence of sleep,
just as there is none now
in the permanence of death,
where he does not hear
or know my grief.
I could not bear it, if he could.
