This poem was written to explore feelings emerging from the loss of loved ones. What happens to us? Are we as resilient as we imagine? What is our response? Do we grow closer to the ones still with us... or do we drift further apart?

Firelight

The steady firelight that this eve
Illuminates us each in turn.
Our gazes silently enriched
We watch its embers burn.

And from our eyes' bright corners see
Reflections of the ones so dear
Who sit be side us faithfully
And tend the fire to us so near

The warmth we feel from either side
adds to the warmth the fire displays
until at last one after one
They're called away to our dismay.

And then the wind grows colder still
As warmth we once felt now is gone.
A wind whose power to chill increased
One friend less now we grow alone

So do we then come closer still
and gaze into the fire?
Or do we drift away as we too
hear the calling lyre.

What once seemed bond of flesh and bone
amidst the friendship's start
is now a fragile note of sadness
plucked upon the heart.

A reed of glass which even now
Is tossed by gentle wind
Being not so fragile still
As that which will not bend

But ever even then the edge
Does call us to its way
A glance, a look, a smile, a word,
And then a price to pay

-Illya Leonov