How do you say, au revoir?

Farewell, this is harder than I thought it would be. My time is winding down on the coils of anticipation, excitement, the nagging thoughts that I might be forgetting something, anything . . . and then there are the leave-takings that are punctuating my last days before I leave for Benin: family, good friends, co-workers, acquaintances and the casual stranger.

Each relationship is different and so are their goodbyes. Most are quiet or talkative, strangely exciting or somewhat sad. Some are clinging; the bittersweet strand of letting go that vibrates between two hearts and then there is the one (that you don’t expect) that is stand-offish; distant with words unspoken.

It is the last one, I don’t understand, which leaves me wondering, yet again, where/when the relationship broken down into this aloofness that sometimes seems so far away that I can’t bear to consider what it means. There is too much that was left unsaid over too many years and each time we meet it is, either careful pleasantries or a wall. I have to admit that there are times when we are close and loving and at those times, I can only wonder that I’m imaging what I think I sense. But, a wall at ‘goodbye’ is painful, for both sides.

The goodbyes are a strange journey in themselves.

Distant Bridge

Between and betwixt,
a bridge of desire spans the gap—
to reach out soft and touch
that elusive memory—
a gradual drift back in search
of what once was.

Wired strands of heart
so strongly fretted,
vibrate through these painful thoughts.
Lost in that distant time
a hand reaches out
unable to bridge the gap between
two lands filled with old despair
that keens on the whistling wind.

Slowly the fog
veils those memories—
echoes from a misty past—
and it is the curvature of the gull’s wing
that defines the wind’s song.

© 2001 Beverly A. Tift