Your Good Heart...a Poem for Myra

There will be other summers,
one hopes.
Berries and greens
and flowers,
so many flowers,
trails of them,
like streams of sunlight
through a forest.

And if no other summer comes
I would like to exit
like Blake
singing,
though too often now
I sing a litany
of sorrows.

Perhaps at that dark end when struggle
no longer pays a dividend,
then some personal joy might be remembered,
some private talisman clasped,
something glittering,
like a small golden scale,
balanced, a little happiness
as light as your good heart
in one pan, and in the other
this eon of devastation.

Your side will win,
eventually,
whatever winning means,
but it will mean something,
your good heart,
on balance, the point of all
that matters.

I'll remember you as darkness lowers
over fading eyes,
I'll remember your smile in the sunlight
as your fingers sift the earth,
sunlight like a victory wreath
upon your brow, as light
as light itself.