The Great Circle

My sister Debby and I shared a favorite poet-philosopher,
John O’Donohue, who wrote that our friends among the dead
(my sister is now one of them) look out for us, that we have
a relationship with the invisible eternal world, that we’re linked
and need not grieve for the dead, who are in a place where
shadow and darkness, loneliness, isolation and pain do not exist.

He believed that the dead have returned to the nest of their identity
in the Great Circle, the largest embrace in the universe,
holding the temporal and eternal as one. Since my baby sister
crossed over, I’ve been on the lookout for her, who promised
me before she died that we would never be separated,
that together we’d find a creative way to connect.

Ten days after she died she sent a scarlet butterfly
with white and black stripes who hovered over a few of us —
her loved ones — discussing politics on my eighth-floor balcony.
No butterflies of any kind have ever visited us before or since.

Weeks later a buck with an injured leg lay down across from me
in Spring Grove Cemetery — a place my sister loved — as I was
seeking solace at an old friend’s grave, mourning the fact
that my sister had willed her body to medical research,
joking she wanted her ashes to land on a compost pile.

In case I needed further evidence that the invisible Circle is real,
I was driving a two-lane road on Tuesday last, when another buck
leapt in front of me, his hooves nearly nicking my front fender.
I stopped just in time to look him in the eye before he disappeared.

My departed sister is having fun as she fulfills her promise.