Sean O’Connor 

Floating

Grief is a floating world between the living and the dead. We feel the presence of our departed loved ones not only in the homes they left behind, or the places they were most familiar with; they may come to us anywhere. We reach out to buy them something we spot in a shop. They could do with one of these. We expect to see them when we arrive home. We lift the phone in a rush to tell them some news we have just heard. Sometimes, we just talk to them, out loud, or silently in our heads. Now and again, I hear people mumble as they tidy graves. 

Sometimes it seems that our dead can be so alive to us that we too are just as alive to them. Sometimes people tell me they are looking forward to joining their deceased in death. Sometimes it seems that grief makes death into something present, something that is wonderfully normal.   

into the graveyard
a hush of descending snow
deepening silence
among the drift of snowflakes
the whispers of my father

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Author’s Note: The tanka, “into the graveyard,” was published in Time Haiku, issue 57, Autumn 2022.

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About the Author

Sean O’Connor is the founder and editor of The Haibun Journal. His first solo collection, Let Silence Speak (Alba Publishing, 2016), was shortlisted for the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2016. His other books include Even the Mountains: Five Years in a Japanese Village (Alba Publishing, 2018) and The God of Bones (Alba Publishing, 2022). He currently lives in rural Ireland.