Father Joe died that year.
The Benedictine monk
who’d got you through
the worst of things.

Cancer got him in the end.
Your youngest daughter
was born that year but
nearly lost some heart

**** up the docs fixed
with their box of tricks
and the hand from God
you guessed. A year you’d

listened to Nellie Melba
from old opera recordings
on your Walkman sitting
on trains to the hospital

and back having visited
the sick wife and babe
both on different wards.
Before the babe was born

you and your wife had
visited the abbey grounds
where Father Joe had been
laid to rest with a simple cross.