The Night I Came to See You Go

The owl flew over my head the night 
I came to see you go,
and I have a memory of a fleeting fox
running from my lights, that may be incorrect.
While the helper hovered in my old room
I laid my hand on the broad arch of a back
I had always known was strong enough to carry the weight 
of any dark--but not perhaps the one in which
you had been so long asleep,
and where you no longer breathed.
Did you know that you were going?
When they carried you steeply down the angled stair
I was afraid in silent light infused with the color black,
and we would not have let you go 
out that New England company front door
like a stranger after an awkward visit,
except that the efficiency of your bearers
was not to be denied. 
How often since then have I recollected
and wondered where you were. It has never seemed
to me that you are gone; always I feel your distant regard
from a place I cannot see. Perhaps it is the same to which
they have retreated in both time and memory, invisible,
your guides and friends, the owl and the fleeting fox.

January 26 2012