Reasons

So much time is wasted -
A futile guessing game.
What happened -- happened,
No matter who I blame.

Guilt enough to pass around,
If each would get his due.
And when the truth is told,
Some guilt for Richard, too.

What is it in my psyche
Makes me search the scene?
So eager for a guilty clue,
I pick the wreckage clean.

It's not as if I sought to stop
Some further tragedy.
I have no other sons to save
But still -- I have to see.

What's given me the right
To handle every bone?
Is not death a private thing?
His reasons were his own.

I saw his shadow hovering
I felt his burning breath.
Though I could not call his name.
I know now it was - Death.

What I did know frightened me.
I had to run away.
I wanted so to take your hand,
But not enough to say.

If you had only come with me,
Or I had stayed to fight.
If I had known the enemy
I wonder if I might.

How could I be so cowardly?
Forever I will pay.
I did not love you well enough
To chase your death away.

                    Hiding Hurt

He was always like that -
even when he was little.
He never let us see his hurts.
If he fell and skinned his knee,
he would scream in pain, but shield
the wound from our inspection.
His pain was beyond our jurisdiction.

We forced our attention then,
though he cried the louder for it.
He grew older and better
at hiding his hurts,
to keep us from intruding.
 
He learned too well.
When he became a young man
and in such awful pain
he couldn't bear to go on living,
he didn't know how to tell us
so we could help.
 
No one looked at his hurt,
and he died of it.

                  Lost

My mind is immersed
In a sea of ruined dreams
You say life must go on?
I want to scream… Why?

Why must the world still turn?
A life has gone too wrong.
My heart is ripped apart.
A child is gone.

Things won't be good again.
It cannot work out right.
Why must I fight on?
I've lost.

                The Test

Will there come a day
I read without a tear
The cryptic words he wrote?
Now they are clear.

He wanted me to see
To understand - but something
In him made it hard
To write a clearer hand.

Had I been a wiser sort -
Read between the lines,
I'd have known time was short.
Now I see the signs.

He could not make it easy
To weigh my worthiness.
His life was in the balance
And I could only guess.

It was a cruel testing.
He knew that I would fail.
He would have the final word
And point to my betrayal.

More words on ruled paper
That later I would read;
Later still would understand
And ever after grieve.