Opening Breath Poem by Patti Masterman

When you are gone, it is like the sails
Have gone on with the wind, alone;
Or the gulls have gone ahead of the crest
Of the wave- or how still music floats over water
To be heard by the unintended, miles away.

There remains a fullness of emptied capacity,
A brightness seen even in partings dark,
Anticipation of more days, interspersed with night.

How small things can blossom to become greater ones,
Though it seemed only a day and a night,
But might have enclosed lifetimes
In the seeming ordinariness,
Of every opening breath.