a funeral poem

I don’t remember your womb, 

or growing like a small pearl between your shells. 

In my thoughts I search for your voice, 

young and open, full, 

before the cup spilled.

It was another time – before all this, 

the gradual collapse of grief, 

a five-year landslide,

that subsides and lets you fill your lungs again,

thinking, how alive everyone else is…

how warm, and animated, and constantly moving.

Your stillness was a relief

but your absence is too present,

filling rooms and photographs and whole cities.

 

Life comes around in a circle.

Once you washed and brushed and dried my hair,

just weeks ago, I did yours.

Too quickly our circle

has spiralled inwards,

closed like a flower, and fallen from the stem.

 

I think of your smile and your expressions,

and the way I read your lips and you read my mind.

There was a time in March

when we thought you were going to die,

and you still looked out for me.

(You say

you think I look a bit down today,

that I should take some time for myself.)

 

Now I wear you like a gown or a shawl,

or a fur coat, or cashmere,

slipping on your sleeves.

I dab you on at my neck,

my mouth, my pulse points.

You are smooth on my face,

a scent on my hands,

the jangle of your silver bracelets

on my arm -

they startle me every time.

 

It’s as if you will always return, in me.

My inheritance is your love,

your standards, your throwing open

the white-painted shutters,

of an ever-outward life.

You gave and gave and gave,

though secretly,

we took from each other,

and you looked right into me,

gave yourself into me,

so that I’d survive.

 

So the future is a long wide garden path,

without your face and your wisdom.

But I will stop and smell the gardenias,

preserve you in a vase,

a candle undressing in the dark.

And I know that in a park somewhere,

or a supermarket, I’ll see you,

at a café in France, at a gallery, a church,

in a concert hall, piano hands poised.

You cannot have gone forever,

because I shall not forget you.