Empty

     "And what was evanescent evanesced"
          --Gjertrude Schnackenberg -- Fusiturricula Lullaby

I can hear the sea.
Here, hold this to your ear--
the empty space inside is echoing
with memories of where she went and did and lived.
This shell is beautiful, mother of pearl,
the home built grain by grain through her long life,
by what she made and what she pulled to her.

I thought she was building a wall
as portable protection from the world,
a comfortable carapace to wear.
Perhaps she was.
Yet in her place the empty air
now sighing through that space
is tenant to a beauty I'd not seen
nor recognized when she resided there,
and which is left to us:
a spiral-roofed cathedral,
hallowed hollow sanctum of her life.

Her evanescent portion occupies
more dissipate a home on other shores.
Yet we retain this beauteous echoing space
in which, ear pressed to heart,
we hear the sea.

Nov 16, 2010, on the death of a friend's grandmother.
Images taken from gastropods.com and aquarium.co.jp