Everything that Matters, Remains

(Walk 23, Otford to Eynsford, 25 May 2002)

The time is coming around,

the full year since you were physically with us-

A time complete unto itself

Before we even dreamed you could be gone

That would've seemed absurd!

But in the unnameable stillness

I find your essence still

Meeting me at the station

-How could it not be so?

For what you exuded

Is surely embodied in our bones....

Sitting or rather lying on the side of a hill filled with buttercups

See the sun painting its light in broad brush-strokes across the valley

In the midst of this wind

In the midst of endlessly droning traffic in the mind

And on the road

Is the stillness of Eternity

That has no past, present or future...

It seems I cannot write today. Despite knowing that somewhere on this hillside,

Richard is probably halfway through yet another of his deliberately provocative epics.

The character in a novel, which I loosely call myself, Steve Small,

Is now getting up.

To step back into the drama of relative three-dimensional existence.

These curves, these sweeping brushstrokes of the windswept valley

Are so marvellous

No words can encapsulate such a miracle.

Yet we can't just BE- we want to create

'ourselves' and everything around us.

It seems that time does heal.

Nearly a year ago, I gazed fixated, at the broken pieces of the loss

No glue could stick them together.

But now I feel your kindness, commitment and influence

Your nearness that has never left.

Where could it go?

THIS includes everything!

When I put pen to paper

Or even look at the sky

There is still this intimacy

Inquiry, incisiveness, humility

You mirrored

At times it seems you came and went in a flash-

Then again- everything that really matters, remains

Here in this vast stillness.