I Think of You in Sudden Moments (sestina)

I think of you in sudden moments but you're here
in unexpected glimpses: in the light
at certain times of year, and in the scent
of yeast, and paraffin and when the air
is icy, in damp twigs and things I own
because they're yours.  I see you always now
as you were in middle age; I know
I'll see you suddenly but never where,
and when I try you don't appear; you're blown
straight in upon some sudden breeze, or slight
and barely noticeable change of air
and also when there's nothing reminiscent
to call you into mind. Evanescent
but always welcome sight, melting like snow
before you're truly seen, and leaving not despair,
but deeper understanding and somewhere
a better sense of who I am.  Your flight
into my world is meaningfully flown,
you come to show and leave me when you've shown,
if only you enlarge some nascent
thought, it will develop better in the light
which you have shed.  I wonder if by now
you're really you or my unconscious sphere
which needs must manifest itself in hair
and eyes, and smile, and clothes, and voice of fair
and reasoned argument in your form, my own
being too easily dismissed. I hear
you when I will not hear myself, you're sent
from myself unto me, that I might know
some deeper truth, not God's light,
perhaps eternal and maternal light
is what you are.  I breathe you in as air
and can as easily exhale, but now,
unlike the time you lived, I don't. I've known
my own intransigence was yours, dissent
part of who we are. But I adhere
to you, you're part of me: the light I own,
my air of certainty. I'm glad you're sent
I like to see you now, in sudden moments, here.