Friday 7 August 2015

A Poem for My Son

A few days after we buried you, it rained.
I wanted to drive out and cover your grave with an umbrella.
I didn’t – logically, I knew you were long past pain
but I wasn’t. It hurt me to think of you lying there

with the wind howling and the rain beating down
on the earth your father so gently covered you with.
(It was raining then too, just a little, and the brown
dirt looked so heavy on the shovel as he lifted it).

Oh, my love, my love. It wasn’t you; a small blue
urn with a golden lid and teddy bears drawn around it,
your ashes inside. Your soul was gone. It wasn’t you.
It was heavier in my hands than you were.

And yet it was you – is you – this little jar
buried among the roses with the other babies.
My body has lost all sign of you. You are
gone. There is no other part of you left.

So forgive me, love, for the moment
of madness, for wanting to keep the cold and rain
from your tiny blue jar. It is a potent

thing, this mother-love for a dead son.  

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