for Pat Kelly

As seasons trade their treasured light and Spring renders
green, and blossom is windblown from the cherished
bough - nobly, your life lay down to sleep a final sleep.

Oh Pat, we are not ready for a world without you in it.
Though you have been schooling us in departure’s ways,
none of us are practised in saying goodbye.

Will you hoist sails on your ghost-skiff now –
and with clouds drawn back on an infinite blue, smile
at the errant notion of a chart for uncharted times?

And while loss is a fray on famished air, strung by
the rhythms and times of your having been - it is a song
of songs and silence, of thunderous echoes - and yet

is buoyant too, when each note recollected is keyed
to joy, and abiding.

Eleanor Hooker's third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) is a recipient of the Michael Hartnett Award