Poem for Jamie

because I saw her tonight,
laughed again.
and she believed in laughter,
helped it to heal

me, others, them,
anyone of the fortune
to align themselves in her
path across the sky.
that streak of pulse and flash
in the pumping vein

of beautiful things.

all with such overwhelming pace
as to make the whole world go “Ahh. . .”
in one breathy gasp,

the way it does for exception and grace,
for a burning star tearing across
our inky night.

and I am among the lucky
to have seen that tonight,
the glowing embers of her firework display
illuminating everyone and their sky.

I am of the few to blink and say,
simply and with a smile
“I saw that. it was beautiful.”


Peter Harvey
Jamie’s Wesleyan friend

The Artist

for Jamie Hulley (1981-2002)

You wanted to create, to be like God,
To shape a vision out of swirling cloud,
To raise Adams up, and lovely Eves,
To write the sunlight falling on the leaves,
The place where possibilities can stir,
The tremulous unfolding of air:
The narratives that come from paradise.

And when you died, we saw through your own eyes:
The paradox of the unreached-for fruit,
The vision of what was and what was not
Unraveling, like knowledge from the trees.
In loss is also metamorphosis.
We saw in a reversal from our grief
The Eden you had left us leaf by leaf.

Kim Bridgford
© 2005    “Instead of Maps”