How Could it Be?
I see you now and again across a restaurant
the red of your jumper catching my eye,
the blue and white check shirt pulling at the sleeve of my attention.
When I look up, of course, it’s not you
How could it be?
I see you in the hospital waiting room hunched
in an uncomfortable plastic chair.
I see the top of your head through thinning hair
still carefully combed
when he looks up, of course, it isn’t you
How could it be?
I imagine I hear you nod your approval
over my shoulder as I read a well-constructed poem
or exceptional piece of literature.
I hear your slow and deliberate consideration;
“Hmmmmm, yeeeeessss” but it isn’t you
How could it be?
Six years have passed.
Your presence hasn’t waned as one would expect it to
like a receding shadow or fading bloom.
You are as real to me now as you were in life
though I cannot choose to visit you,
only treasure the glimpses I am gifted;
at the concert hall, the bookshop,
in the armchair.
Day 18 of Napowrimo and the challenge was to write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail.
This poem is about my Father-In-Law who never seems too far away, even now.
Funny, it feels like I could have written something similar about my late Belle-mère. Very nice piece!
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Thank you. Maybe you should? It’s very therapeutic xx
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