To my dead son or daughter;
I left you, let you pass,
kept you out

frozen: The mark of
the palmist foretelling five children,
I climb this hill now, with four at my side.

Your memory: A shadow on the distant range,
where eucalypt is  to its last;
the blue mountain.

Though I climb and four grow,
the wife that was then is now gone;
her grief and her echo.

Still I sense the soft pad of your call,
the tug of your passing,
and almost
the first breath of greeting.



*MChallis 2006