Cremation

The brick wall towers over
the low curtained aperture.
The silent congregation watches
his coffin slide over the
narrow rails, the curtains
draw back to make way
for his exit down to
the crematorium fire below
to burn the outer shell and
energy of the soul he used to be.

Yet it does not extinguish
the fine spun steel web he twisted
around us from our earliest days,
a web of self doubt, uncertainty,
never knowing where we stood.
clinging to each other a first,
we gradually moved apart as we
saw those spun steels for ourselves,
walked away from them.

As we each find, untwist, our
own strands of that web,
we allow ourselves to achieve,
to love and be loved,
find joy in life, walking
in our own directions.

Two of us have recognised the web
and look for fulfilment each day.
One of us has yet to
acknowledge fully the web
denies all its power over us.

Will we ever find
a close relationship
with each other again ?

Previously posted May 2016

 

A Still Grey Figure

This still grey figure
ramrod straight, eyes shut,
in the hospital bed
ignores us, leaves us
to talk among ourselves
to talk to official people
complete official forms.

He had always done the talking
at full volume, ruled what
his family said and did,
complained when they did not
do his bidding, his way.
Now his children make
decisions for him.

Does he know what we do
in some incomprehensible way ?
in some different dimension ?
Too late now.
He is powerless
to change what we do.

Previously posted May 2016

Another Phone Call

The father rang his daughter
to say the ashes of
his wife, her mother
would be blessed by the vicar
and scattered over the
town rose gardens.

He said he missed his wife
deeply even though she had
lain so ill in her hospital
bed for so long.
The daughter said she too
felt her mother’s absence
even though mother’s mind was
often far from the woman
in the hospital bed.

“You know nothing !”  he roared.
“I miss her, she was my wife !
You were just her daughter !”
The phone slammed down,
a hammer blow to a connection
grasped only from one end.

The daughter had thought
in time they might find
the fabled father daughter bond.
Now she knew they
would never connect.

After the mother’s ashes
were scattered the father
was astounded
when the daughter
moved to another town
far away.

Previously posted May 2016