08. The Plot

She returned occasionally, that is all I know
now cannot find it on her own, since
once at the edge, it is surrounded by
the creeping extension of the cemetery.

Feeling still excluded, I lead her to the plot
a place held constant in our overlapping minds
behind us drags the cortège of the years,
untended paths and grasses make it hard to find.

Green algae and lichen scabs its crumbling edge.
Quartz chippings, always out of place, have been reclaimed
by rotting leaves and a broken skin of dust
on loam and clay that also intervenes.

I haven’t been there often since he died,
which fact now moves me to the verge of shame.
Someone else put flowers in the crooked pot:
again I read the brief inscription and his name.

Glancing off, I wander round the other graves
to find a way to step out of the cloud,
she doesn’t feel like me this need to leave,
to let the course of nature go unsupervised.

Her attachment stays, though heaven knows why;
the braid of troubled years and duty paid?
Again she reaches in, as though to test a cake,
move it down a shelf, be sure she gets it right.

No longer face to face, or side by side
they are as separate as flesh can be
and soon, with nothing left to satisfy
she’ll pass the charge of resurrection onto me.