On the death of my Father

 In the early morning

of your death

you curled,

gentle

around your pillow

and followed

out

the soft tide of the night.

 

You were always early,

up before the rest of us -

a thin gold sliver

underneath the kitchen door and

I knew

you were breakfasting already,

ready for the day.

 

Now,

these days,

we shamble on in shadow,

rudderless,

press-ganged

on some mad, polar trek;

heads down,

we are desperate,

whipped close by bone-

whispering chill.

 

Here

in this strange deep winter,

on this uncharted shelf

of drift

and treacherous ravine,

where dreams are fitful

and fracture the night

and wedge of day -

even here

in squall and white-out

I know you

still

to be my sweet, my

fixed mark,

steady,

in the beating of my heart,

in the roaring of my blood.

***

To celebrate Monica

The airy arms of the elm

open to

pale winter sun,

and we cluster

beneath them -

 

those of us still here,

with feet still clamped to

earth and soil and

root ;

mud-bound we

knit you

close, our fingers

still

entwine:

 

we are come to

hear you whisper -

we wait on

the falling of a leaf -

in these quiet, these

wintery spaces:

 

we are barely warmed

and yet we smile, we

talk together and

weep,

in this mild wind,

in this new and hopeful

garden.

***

Storm

Grief gusts

and shakes at everything

that had once seemed

so sturdy;

 

sheets of roof

fly,

a wild and jagged dance

in wind, while

windows

shiver

in their fragile panes;

 

this solid house

creaks and groans,

its tenure

suddenly

contingent,

precarious on this rough

promontory of soil and stick and rain.

 

Planted here,

in the crazed

centre

of this cyclone's eye,

I plan to grow,

to see the bright stillness

of the morning,

to know again

the world washed clean.