saintadatha

Defining Emptiness


Our conversation wore its holes
like the grandmothers crocheted shroud,
like the tired, old blanket that covered you
whenever you slept on our sofa.

Insubstantially, now, you fill these vacancies
in our communal fabric;
a vapour vital like the air in-between,
making holes whole,
emptiness defining.

You appear in memoriam,
firing in ethereally in that voice -
a reprimand of taste, an abusive quip,
a shared song, a laugh, a joke,
a fullmouthed mumble, crumbs falling.
Never an apology, but why should you?

Memories flicker by like the clicka-clicka-clack
shuffle of the roadside railings
as we soar towards the ancient Welsh,
as we roar towards the abuse of vowels.

And where are you?
Not here beside me.
A monument of luggage is stacked
in a forced attempt to Move On,
then someone whispers your name
and a silence settles.

Failed magicians, disabled sorcerors are we all.
This illusion of continuity that we summon
is unsatisfactory, is elusive; allusive.

Once youd have devoured such grammar,
such abuse of the English tongue.
But now you are speechless:
you have become that decisive emptiness,
that emptiness defining.

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