In the Nest of Our Hearts

(for Neil Gelvin)

I hope you left this world

as seamlessly as your fingers danced

on the neck of your guitar,

string to string, fret to fret,

sliding from one song into another.

I hope you find yourself on a new stage,

a heavenly hay wagon, perhaps,

playing the song from which all songs come,

the song of being.

I hope you know the song you left for us

like the song of a migrating meadowlark,

sung in a field of blazing stars and prairie smoke

rests in the nests of our hearts.

Feel free to pass this on to anyone