I missed you yesterday
and looked for you
among the artifacts of your life -
your room with pictures,
the clothes that still carried your scent,
your favorite tools and books,
the tapes you loved to hear.

The very walls echoed your vitality
and carried faint memories or riotous laughter.
And so I sat there, comforted for a while,
but forced at last to confess
that although beautiful memories lingered
you were not there,
not then and never again.

If I could not find you yesterday,
where, then, can I look today?
Who can I talk to, implore, beg
to show me the way?
Where are the hidden doorways
to the signs and wonders
others claim to see?

My musings bring me no answers
so I must take a walk to clear my mind.
Ahead, I see children playing,
and their laughter floating on the wind
reminds me of your own carefree approach to life.
Their running mirrors your own abandon
and the way you always found joy in simple things.

Can this be the answer
to the riddle of finding you again?
Can it be that I will hear you
in every moment of laughter?
That I will see you
in the actions of a mischievious friend,
that I will feel you in every touch of compassion?

I've always heard
that if you seek, you will find.
Perhaps the corollary to that is that
you must seek in the right places.
I've been looking in the scrapbook
of all that used to be
and found only momentary solace.

So let me look for you anew
in all the wonders and blessings of life.
I believe you are reflected
there with every expression of happines and joy,
in every instance of fearless oration
and with every act of unconditional love.


In loving memory of Lance Porter Hopkins
July 20, 1975 - November 30, 1999
(C)Harold Hopkins, January 2001
Where Are You ?