By Jack A. Urquhart ©2025

For my late husband, Raymond Boyington, on the third anniversary of his passing

Arriving in the post today 
clutch of Kodachrome memories,
gift from a friend 
perhaps clearing, as I cannot,
the archives of a shared history,
i.e., decades-old photographs of you
freshly launched, sapling-thin, 
lost inside a 70s polyester suit,
cross-armed and cocky in cable-knit –
not to mention the aviators,
epic mutton-chops, 
and vaguely licentious mustache. 
Dear God, there you were again, 
spilling from a Kodak envelope,
artifact from another era.

More images to join the others 
strung, fading, curling,  
across my kitchen casement
my closet doors, above the lintel.
Like yellowing leaves 
from the tree of life we made,
they flutter and abide, 
autumnal remnants 
of all our favorite seasons.
 
Which is not to say 
there haven’t been others since, 
digitally framed attachments,
new intimacies – some too fleeting,
too young, too hopeless 
for permanent display.
Lovely beings encountered 
in your absence;
some of them searching for, 
perhaps wary of finding, 
what we experienced: 
that life-giving melding
of flesh and spirit –
The One Prayed for, 
The One longed for.
 
And now, suddenly, 
in this late life season,
a new melding, a new love – 
prayed for, longed for –
living alongside you 
in the beating frame
of my resuscitated heart.
 
And yet, Dear man, 
focus of my mid-life journey,
I cannot put you away,
cannot set aside the captured moments
of our quarter century union,
cannot countenance the finality 
of archiving you,
of making you sight unseen. 

I cannot abide losing you
a second time.