after Patricia Fargnoli’s “From a Rented Cottage in Winnisquam in Rain”

I am trying to believe I have a soul.
That the soul moves on like a balloon
set loose into the air by a child’s hand.
In late season dusk I feel myself
stir with the closing of the light,
that gloaming before night comes on.
And I wonder if death is really final
since now I am nearer
than I ever expected to be when young.
I want my own hands
to keep flying across pages
casting shadows as if doves’ wings
float from my consciousness.
Last night rain fell heavily
as a dream of the past
and I rose in blue light
to listen at by the window that
only showed the glare of my eyes,
my face already an obsidian ghost.
Maybe there are angels who sing
us all out of our bodies
that only the dying can hear.
Once I thought I heard
my father’s voice from another room
when no one else was home but me
and he was long gone,
like my grandfather who visited me
in a dream, his hand so soft in mine.
Then there was the time I felt
my best friend Rick’s arms
leading me into a waltz
across the wooden floor
but he, too, no more, and never
in life had I seen him dance.
I want to believe we are more
than these breakable beings
that come in life without
even the slightest warranty.
We’re lucky to be here at all,
for any length of time, I know.       
But where, after we let go
solid ground, do we go?
Is it into the light or a darkness
so profound it feels like womb,
soft as being tickled with a feather
by the hand of god?
Maybe the soul is an eye that sees
everything at once and never closes.