—"The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
Of final belief. So, say that final belief
Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose."
(Wallace Stevens, "Asides on the Oboe")
Let's try to be clear about this:
Lizzy is gone, dead and buried these eighteen months.
There is nothing I can say to change that fact,
No thought, however cleverly expressed,
Nothing to be written down upon a page
To miraculously deny the fact of loss.
People say I should get a puppy to take her place.
I cannot start again with another dog
Because now any such dog would outlive me.
The grim reality of age seventy-five
Is that starting anything over is a bad idea.
Castaneda was right: the issue is "having to believe."
There is no choice, without belief one has nothing.
The matter for choice is what I choose to believe,
In accordance with my inmost predilection.
Therefore I have to believe that the spirit of Lizzy,
Her soul, her presence, remains here by my side,
A thing as real as her former physical body.
It is not a matter of one's philosophical stance
Concerning the soul's survival after death.
I must choose presence or be left with nothing.
— J. Jeffrey Bragg (2 February 2020)—oOo—