I
 
It had been coming on for days
Things coming to a head
The panic and distress
of a situation beyond his control
Trying to work he turns to one thing
then to another but in the end
the teeth clench and the tears fall
Help he says over and over Help Me
And there is no answer
except the harsh noise from the street
but watching people pass
he knows his anguish shared
he knows this pain
is not his alone
 
II
 
She was at home
the children at school
She rang her father
He said ‘I shook his hand
and said goodbye’
And she had cried for a man
her father knew and loved
yet unlikely to last the week
A jewel set in his rich life
A friend
 
III
 
He knocked on her studio door
Are you disturbable? he said quietly
She was working on the floor
(which she does)
but on a nearby easel stood a canvas
colours and forms foreign
to his experience of her work
Her eyes told him she had been crying
She was full of a grief that caught her
between brush strokes
her vision swimming in tears
My father died she said
We were there at the end
And now she was working his passing
into her present
Painting out his death.