My Santiago

Despite ceremony, - ritual, symbol and gesture, Despite every effort to hold them, To etch their lives in the grain of memory; Now,

In the sunbathed present, The shadows have drifted - and they are gone!

And time moves on, Distancing their loss.

So we - the alive - live on!

And before we know it, We shake heads with disbelief; A full year has gone and then two And then some more…

They are there in our minds, our hearts; But they are not any more in the landscape,

And the mind -of the living.

Moving on, They have left the living behind.