Stage
Seven months on and the world keeps delivering
your absence: this morning an email reminder
from Moonpig about your birthday. You’d be 94.
Then later, in the chemist, an elderly man, who must have fallen
outside, sitting by the door while a masked young woman
cleaned and dressed the wound on his arm.
It’s the gentleness that tears at my heart, his and hers.
And I remember the kindness of a neighbour who helped you
home when you’d walked too far along the prom.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ you used to ask as you watched
the man you knew you were slipping from your grasp.
Oh Daddy, why can’t I just remember the good times?
Bingo, helping you with your Spanish homework, the time
we went to Laugharne together to Dylan’s boathouse,
how you used to say to me, ‘You’re just like your mother.’
But still, after all these months, when the curtain first
goes up on my memory it is the latter darkness
that steps towards the footlights. I have to believe
this will pass, that grief will loosen its shroud
and the stage will flood with light and I will be
filled with joy, with the grace of your well-lived life.
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| 1951 |
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