12/12/12

Where you lie
 
We find the grassy square
between some yawning stones
inscribed with other names.
A leafless tree stands sentry
at the corner of your plot
roots reaching down
below a lacy shadow
cast across the green.
We used a hand-drawn map
to find the grave.
He’d been the day before.
 
The estuary view
has long since gone
since built up houses
block the way, but the
curlew’s cry can still be heard,
is what he wrote to say.
​
We leave some shells
beneath the tree
small tokens of
our knotted loss.
Forty years unfurl.
Unspent grief erupts in me.

© Alison Hackett  First published online 15/12/15

My mother, Lesley, in 1961