Slan

After the Funerals

one by one they take their leave; parting

without formal courtesies

startled by the shock, again, as

one by one they take their leave.

Affection, understanding, even knowing

what there was to value, come too late:

gifts delivered past their use by dates.

2

The plane strains upwards in the night, banks, and there,

below the city that we thought we knew;  

drab streets, a park, its monuments, some houses

where the welcome meant we didn’t want to leave,

revealed as glowing labyrinth: vast, intricate and beautiful.

Too late we realise, again, how much there was to learn

before the detail disappears, becomes a pool of light

shrinking to a faint glow in the skies

behind us as we head towards another dawn.

3

So one by one they leave

stories that I didn’t understand and now forget,

lives whittled back to facts and dates

no one contests or verifies.

Box brownie photos in an old shoebox?

Left trying, once again, to reconstruct a map

I never stopped to memorise.  

(Fom Rough Spun to Close Weave)