upon receiving word of the death of my father's friend on the telephone in Madagascar

We don't know when our time is up.
Yet we live- indeed, thrive- in that blissful ignorance,
necessarily oblivious.

When one of us becomes too-soon-gone
it is difficult to know which is harder to endure:
the loss we live through
or the life which remains

and in that precarious state
we teeter.

Though I did not know him,
I understand what it means to be in the world without him,
because of the certain
soft sound
-almost imperceptible-
in my father's voice,
breaking,
breaking over waves.

~ for D.B.