where are you now

by Alexander Etheridge

I keep hearing the gone 

are gone and don’t 

come back

Someone said what’s done 

joins what’s vanished

and in a pure dance

they fall into God’s tear

Meet me there

all you that were dear to me

you that flew up

into moonshadow

What will I do then

in my own last moment

Will I see it 

coming

and will we be apart

as we are now

or blended seamlessly

out there in Heaven’s

fields    Heaven’s 

winter fields

Maybe I’m already

falling or maybe

I’m a drifting grain

of pollen

Who’ll come to me

at the center of

the void

where snowfire blooms

Where is

the shoreless ocean

You told me death is

bone-close and woven

in every thought   

and that in time’s 

dark chapel

all our grief and 

all our joy are recalled

by an infinite mind

Find me there

after the last

morning

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022.