Her remembered voice seems to haunt these streets,
The stucco terraces and tree lined pavements
Transfigured into white light by the chill
Of frosty winter mornings.
Was it New Year, or the short days after Christmas,
When we last cuddled up beneath old bedding,
Her pregnant belly warm as a summer evening,
The child within fidgeting like a kitten,
Or a sleeping lioness longing for the sun?
Was it then, or just a few weeks earlier?
After sixty years recollections become less vivid.
We felt as though there was no room at the Inn,
Outsiders watching the stars dissolve in snow clouds.
Her husband permitted these secret trysts, for some reason;
Perhaps he understood the depths of love,
Or was it that he guessed how short the time we had
And needed this reconciliation.
Meanwhile, in the streets outside, daily life went on,
So like a mindless clock measuring the hours
But not able to calculate the reason.
The following summer she died, but not before shaking
The somnolent wards awake with one last laugh.
She had spied her baby giggling
At radiant pools of sunlight floating on the walls.
"If I dared be as innocent as my wee bairn,
Then surely death would not be such a problem".
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
28th. - 29th. December 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment