For all those years

In search for her I walked right through her ghost
feeling the cold around the kitchen table, where
for all those years she read the bible, talked at length
of paradise, god on a throne, how angels sing in heaven
an endless drone of praise. There are no ways
that I can hold a spirit that will move
as fast as thought or hear its sounds protruding into darkness
from spheres beyond. I found her dying with her spirit gone
but still her flesh was holding on and on..
She’d lost her voice. It dimmed like candle light.
I listened to her prayers in the night, although they never came
yet still were sounding in my ear the same, as when
she spoke them at her kitchen table before each meal.
Bless oh Lord our daily bread, bless oh Lord our flesh,
our mind, our doing, our waking, our sleep.
What else to bless?
May be the silence, now, her soundless room,
the place where her chair stood, the empty bed.
Do bless it all, oh Lord, she has forsaken you
and lives now with the dead.