Loss, in Five Acts

i. Return

Through a dark tunnel
of bent birch and cedar I walk.
Soft moss on cobblestone. Home.

The tilted bird bath drips with
tea coloured rain. Vines snake up
old walls even as the sandstone crumbles.

Decaying gutters sag with sad, welcoming
smiles, heavy with dead leaves
and the fallout of terracotta tiles.

ii. Memory

On her lap, in the evening, swinging
on the front porch chair. Humming
a lullaby, she whispers softly and

marks with a brush of her ringless finger,
magpie and minor, chicken and hen
and then, soft kisses on my cheek for bed.

At the bus stop, she is squinting and waving
and waiting. At hometime, she is feeding the
pigeons every last crumb from my lunchbox.

iii. Roses

The garden beds sit like unkept graves,
clutching the roots of dead roses. Row after row
of thorny crucifix. Anemic and budless.

Were they red or white or pink?
That memory is dim. Perhaps something
more obscure. Champagne or chartreuse.

A sudden notion. Todays black and grey
procession was as much for those roses
as for anyone. Colourless, flowerless burials.

iv. Home

From the splintered porch, the black-clad
grievers leave. Arms clasped loosely to backs.
Foreigners to me, they mourn a stranger.

Bobbing heads. Beaten brows.
They depart this scene like walking crows.
I do not recall them. I do not recall any of them.

A made-up apparition, a funeral thought. Her,
leaning, two handed on wicker cane,
smiling at the seriousness of the day.

v. Senses

My head reels with a million histories
of youth. Skin, goose-bumped with
nostalgia, eyes full with wet salt and

dead wishes. In the dusty kitchen a tin cup
smells of rosehip and butter. A rolling pin sits
still, old enough to be my father.

She overwhelms me with her truancy. I wonder
too late, if she knows my heart. I wonder if I am
her loss, like she is mine.