While smoking my mother's ashes
in my father's stale pipe
I felt a curious high, which was strange
- the rest of the batch had been expectedly bland

and homely. I walked the aroma through her discarded bungalow,
into the kitchen, out into the bare garden following the line

of the absent washing over the sunken stepping stones,
ending in the cul-de-sac of her rock garden of heather and herbs.

I sat on the concrete steps of the dismantled green house
letting the hit of the ash fill my lungs, holding it there

until it filled my head, before very slowly
breathing out the deep memory
of mum and dad, shouting and laughing and l allowed myself

to float above the colour of the border plants, up out of reach
of the childhood sprawl until I was back in her smoke filled room,
full of her emptiness - chin raised in silent prayer for one last breath.

And still gripping the warm bowl of my high, I sang her songs,
knees-up with the best of them and with mum on both arms, chin raised high

with a chorus of belief in family and friends and neighbourhood
and how this was never going to end well,

but meanwhile we'll have a party
making sure the whole street knows they're welcome
- and all the more if they have grief to smoke and memories to sing
- surely this is a life worth living.

Put another record on,
there's tea on the ***, ashes in our pipes
and songs to sing.