I have often found greater satisfaction
With the hesitant promise of sunshine
of a cold February day,
than of the complacent June midsummers
anticipating its own decay

They say an end must come
To every good thing
And you see,
I don’t want to wait till summer’s end
to pine,
wistful, for spring.

Hopes swell more malignant
Under promise’s anticipatory doting
So I have chosen a gratification more faithful
When I tell myself
*“I shall be in want for nothing.”

You tumble your gentle words
into the well of my inarticulate silence
Beckoning excitedly to me to come, come
And the ghosts, they don’t quite know what to do
In the presence of joy as lovely as your’s

You remember the best of me
When i barely understand the worst
And amidst the madding throngs
quietly retell those stories of old
In the most familiar of voices
Until they seep into my skin and well my eyes
with long streams of relief

For all my exquisite words I still cannot articulate
How home draws incomprehensibly closer
When you simply let me be
the girl I thought I forgot

I remember the little stories about the quotidian,
those garden plants, fertiliser and growth
you, tumbling unscathed whilst climbing up yet another tree
your voice, reverberating at the end of a phone line: "hallo???"
And how we marvelled at your F1 driving
as you kept silent
(you liked it secretly, we know)

You were a mechanic
with an unusual gift for sound
And I learnt respect one Sunday morning
when mummy told me your story
of how you closed a dead man's eyes
with a promise of providence

It's the first time death has hit
so close to home
yet it is a difficult concept to grasp,
so far away from home
and still, I return
half-expecting to see you waiting at your door

And i have started to twitch at the word "grandfather"
because you only feel the absence
in light of a presence.

People say our present is the only reality
But I have found myself traversing the deepest seas
Sprawled on a blanket of stars
somewhere within the epidermal regions of your mind
(what lies beneath?)

What a shame,
Words do no justice
To the privilege of voyage
and of discovering that travelling
over cups of coffee
and a good night’s sleep
is but little cost at all.

I listened
to the stars in spring hesitantly
then confidently
when I realised
that its melding tones  were imbued no longer
by hues of grey.

Memory fades
and the aches that once seared so familiar
are now but the entrails
of a year that has sailed steadily away.

you fear that
no one will ever love you
and lonely howling winds will soon come hustling  
into the spaces of your vacant night
so you grapple
and jostle
for any semblance of consolation
just to last the high

but your embers ain’t worth their sparkle
and firewood soon burns dry
so tell me, my friend
what did you give in exchange
for that borrowed light?