As the first wildflowers fade,
as early grasses yellow,
as summer’s beginning approaches,

the morning offers a near-perfect breeze
as I meet an out-of-town friend for breakfast,
as he has just delivered another friend to my city

for outpatient surgery to help her see.
He and I talk about how good it is to be seen,
as he likes to say.

How we long for those we can no longer see,
how they show up for us in the most ordinary ways
like last night, standing with these two friends,

saying goodbye, looking high in the sky at
the waxing quarter moon, Venus nestled nearby.
“There she is!” he said of his departed beloved

with whom he fell in love under such a moon.
There they all are in the stars, the ones
overhead, the ones embedded in our cells,

we who are, after all, made of starstuff,
our guiding lights never leaving us high and dry,
leading us home, fixed points on our compass.

May it always be so.

•••

For Ron. For Sue. For their departed beloveds.