Like my mother's gravity and drift
so many years after her last
rainfall of roses and dirt;
like the others time-leased in this
undulant stone wave;
like the singular trees
(in particular that warped birch
swaying in a sudden cold shower,
trailing its skirts
in time with the shaggy old cypress
framed in the arched window
of her last address);
like the visitors observing dates
on private calendars; like the words
and the lost for words: the late
departed, remembered, prayed for,
dearly beloved, missed,
survived by, always, forever;
like the suburb's expanded brawl
of busyness; the old cottages
opposite the cemetery wall
endlessly buffeted
by lorries on the main road,
their window-frames flushed
with evening sun – like the occasion
and the thought's inadequacy,
its attraction
to the outer reaches, fled
and ever-fixed, adrift
with our space-faring dead.
Mark Granier’s poems have appeared in the New Statesman, Poetry Review and Carol Ann Duffy’s online pandemic project/archive, Write Where We Are Now. His latest collection, Ghostlight: New & Selected Poems, was published by Salmon in 2017.
