more soon

I Hide Away

I hide away those things
which no longer signify,
absences, withdrawls,
and take the good into the future,
our love,
incredulous,
reborn.

I bid you farewell
in this formal space.
Noone willever see you again,
but I do
in the bricks and mortar
that made
our home,
in the shape you left
in your empty chair.

Leaving

I have started to leavethis home,
packing away the memories,
storing the tears and laughter
and years of my life
in my heart.

I will not meet you here again.
I loved you better than you knew,
I stayed....

Do I dishonour you memory?

I do not mean to.

I loved you,
I always will,
But now I have to leave.

Important things

These are what are important.

Silence,
the feel of a pen,
needle,
brush
in my hand

or the keys of my piano
under my fingers.

sounds drip

Sounds drip into
my conciousness

an icecream van

children crying

Somewhere a lawnmower drones....

I am empty,
Hollowed out,
An echo chamber.

Do you remember me?

Do you remember me?
Or have you forgotten me
as you sit in the sun
sleeping,
while time
trickles through that
corner of your garden,
where dappled shade, and water,
and evening sunlight
erase all memories?

funeral service

The words were
okay.
I coped. Just.

When the music started
the knife twisted in my heart.

I stood next to your coffin
all that remained of our
twenty nine years.

It still makes no sense,
the shocking suddeness
of your death.

I Sit and Wait

I sit and wait in the sun
As endless days tick by
Second by second.
This is what it means to be in exile.

Homesickness.
That's what this is called,
The panic of being adrift
In a foreign landscape.

I love the raw mountains
Of Spain.

What I long for are
rainwashed hills,
sheep studded,
blue-green trees,
black earth,
English domesticity.

I will never try to leave
Again.

Funeral

The hearse arrives
With your simple unadorned coffin.
I place lilies over your body.

We leave the house,
head towards the crematorium.
A sick anxiety overwhelms me.
I do not want to make a fool of myself,
Not there,
Not then.

I wish I had,
Instead of being foolish
At this late date.
I wish I had stood and shouted,
Screamed and cried.......

I was dignified in my grief.
I have not been so dignified
Since.

Death

You lay
blue and cold.

I tripped
over your dead hand
and apologised.

That hurt me
more than anything.

Severance

As sudden a
as the fall of axe on neck
You were gone.

I never said goodbye
or I love you.
Now, forever beckons.

I can't even remember
the sound of your voice.

Away from Home

Away from home
I remember you with clarity,
The sound of you,
Your laughter.

We were friends,
Created a fortress
With which to keep outsiders
Out.

Your premature death
Has left me hollow,
Searching for new meaning
in my life.

Maybe there is no meaning?
After all,
there is no meaning
in your death.

Widow Woman

What do you imagine
When you say the word
"widow"?

An old lady dressed in black?
Grandchildren?
A fulfilled life?

For old
read fifty two.
Dressed in black?
Never.
A fulfilled life?

Our life was just beginning.
We had grown perfectly contented,
Understood one another too well
Finished each other's sentences.

How else do you define marriage?

Now, prematurely, I am widowed,
I must redefine myself
Before I begin to act
like an old lady
Dressed in black.