Thursday, 13 August 2020

In Good Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

This poem first appeared on the blog in 2014.

Regular readers will know that I believe in the existence of ghosts in the nicest possible way. (There are unwelcome ghosts, too, of course, but they are of no concern in this particular poem.)

We may be slaves to time in this life, but remembrance and the posthumous conscious from which it springs are life forces in another dimension altogether; where time and personal space unite to cross frontiers we can but imagine ... until it is our time, too, to cross to that proverbial 'other side'. 

IN GOOD COMPANY

I went to your grave
on Easter day, a longing in the heart
to be near, as once we were

I knelt, unable to pray,
laid a bouquet of flowers at the stone,
glad to stay …
Someone wished me Peace,
said pain would pass and hurt grow less,
that you’d left but briefly,
but that’s not what I wanted
to hear, just to be with you once more
as once we were
                 
A tugging at my sleeve,
but I wept, and would not, could not
leave without you;
gently now, lifting my face
to the sky, showing aspects of our history
like a home movie;
easy then to rise and turn away
from a stone and flowers, ours the gift
of eternity ...

Walking hand in hand
through a cemetery, you and I, content
to be in good company

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: Poem and title slightly revised (2014) from an earlier version that appears in First Person Plural by R N Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]


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