Poem: DEATH WALKS BEHIND YOU

 

DEATH WALKS BEHIND YOU 

when you went away
I declared war on owls,
bereavement needs a target,
they happen to be here,
this indefinable sense of ‘but’
that burns like a galleon
on a different ocean…
my history is being edited,
pieces are chipped away
and flare into extinction,
I don’t like these spaces,
this silence is scary,
people who are part of me
are no longer here,
David, Gwen, Denis,
I become slimmer, more tenuous
by the fact of their leaving,
since you went away
I argue with my reflection,
pick fights with my shadow,
the one certainty in this
uncertain cosmos is
this slow bleeding
of the self…
yet this morning there are
new buds on the willow,
for each life lost
there is new life