NOT GONE

you are not gone, not really.
feeling you, knowing you, sensing you-
it is more real now than any long ago touch.
we have marked your resting place; a stone stands where you sleep
and we come to it on occasion to remember what made you, you.
we miss your smile, undeniably but in the missing is a joy,
an unexplainable, resolute sunshine that lingers carefully like some untold secret.
we touch your name engraved there
like a father touching his child for the very first time
and there is this, this internal knowing.
one that surpasses memories, one that overwhelms remembrance,
one that confirms the exacting power of the present
and tells us that you are not gone, not really
and we are, after all that has passed, still one.

jimmy johnson © 1998