Your twinkling gaze through eyes like those forget-me-nots
A language of its own freeing you from its knots
The soundless barrier of illness keeping still
What independence remained from years ago, fill
My mind in vivid photographs, the losing game
A ravenous tide beating against a grown flame
Yet out of sea in between the crashes, I hear
The siren's call of vacant memories - a seer
Family gathered close around an old display
Reliving their childhood days on the stairway
Through old film reels, an endless stream seeing
A husband early on young, successful, and trim
A man of service during World War Two - he was
A businessman and father of four to applause
The years speeding up as they fast forward to then
My fond childhood days spent visiting you when
My grandmother used all she could to keep you well
From advancing onto the shore where it too dwelled
When I'd wheel you around the shops and stop to look
And talk to you by the dusty shelves of old books
Unknowingly then that you were slowing falling
The veil of innocence gone, lightly squalling
As maturity took held of my mind and saw
The reality of death in surprising awe
Yet it was not until last year that the sadness fed
As you shifted into a fallen angel ahead
Of the rest of us in peace with the earth's ashes
The comfort of hearing your every breath flashes
By as the warm feeling of holding your hand fades
Into a void of numbness where it still cascades
A year has past since then and while I still feel blue
From time to time you are always with me, it's true
© 2016
