For David

For David

These words aren't the ones that I wanted to write
The coffee cup curves round my hand as I struggle
To capture my thoughts, perhaps with a poetic lilt
Somehow appropriate to the moment before me.
So many others have expressed their thoughts
Outpourings of grief, turned out with a lyrical
Flick of the pen, or tap of the keyboard
But here, nothing comes. The cupboard is bare.
I open my mind and I find nothing there.
Only a sense of the infinite loss that many have felt
It’s a cruel, callous hand that has been dealt.
But even that rhyme is forced, out of time
The moment is broken. There's nothing to say
That could ever fill the void that is left.
Bereft of thought, and without a notion
Of how to express the - the what?
And by the same token
There can be no grief, only loss, of words
And of meaning. An absence of feeling, even as
Old songs play on repeat. Just dull, empty,
Blinking of eyes as the wind whistles outside.
It doesn't care, and nor do the final few leaves
That fall through the air, joining the rest
Ground cover, ready for winter's storms
To form into a mulch. I have nothing, and
Nothing is to be had, beyond a sad realisation
That my thoughts, like leaves, serve only
To litter the ground. Winter will come,
Itself oblivious, cold insult to injured souls.
And what of time, steam rollering over
Already crushed memories of those he has left behind
Turning the future into the past. But then, at last
Perhaps a single green shoot, so long in coming
A tiny reminder of tendrils of life, still to take root.

9 December 2021