Departure

Should I depart early,

will you feel me leave?

Which memories of me will linger,

wandering the corridors of your consciousness?

Which will trammel upon your heart,

leading you to seek me where my spirit dwells?

You’ll start with the Savannah River, on the fall line,

being careful to look for alligators who have migrated north, feeling the threat beneath the water, previously limited to moccasins and copperheads.

Come down to the island, there below the shoals, where the cypress grow, hosting hunting hawks who light upon the highest branches, taking sky siestas from riding thermals, searching land and water, preying

while herons perch on protruding knees, gnarled wood, damp above the water line, fishing.

If you can’t find me among the shoals,

where the water flows clear and cold,

it’s possible that you don’t know how to look

properly,

perhaps searching with your eyes

instead of your heart.

If looking for me finds you not finding me, try listening.

I'll be in the breeze,

dancing through needles and leaves of trees I love: cedar, cypress, oak and pine, river birch, magnolia, and dogwood.

I'm not Uncle Walt, and you'll never find me if you look among the leaves of grass—I won't be on the ground, growing from dirt or blooming in the dooryard with lilacs.

If you can't hear me in the breeze,

do not despair; I cannot linger everywhere,

and you'll find me in music: Allman Brothers, Steve Miller, Steve Earle—I'm in the wild mountain honey; take seven turns on the seven bridges road, unbroken and unbent,

still dancing.

If nature and music fail you,

look to the books. I'm there in Huck Finn, journeying with the Magi, the sound and fury of my words

on my own pages with Faulkner and Eliot, in Steinbeck and Porter, Shakespeare and Pope.

I'm with Flannery and Eudora, Hemingway and Yeats, Frost.

If I should depart early,

if you cannot find me

in any of these places where I live,

look to your heart, my love,

explore your memories of me, keep me alive and dancing in the rooms I live in—the ones expanding in your mind, let my laughter and love be the soundtrack as you remember the delight I found in you dappling and dazzling me with your love.