I
know now why the harvest was so rich that year,
fields fair overburdened with crop,
faunts flax-haired
beneath an ever more golden sun.
I know.
For him.
For him, I know,
and, within the knowing
stays the remembering,
sharpened even yet by loss,
softened by the edges of other memories:
A grey-feathered quill,
silent and finally
at rest,
curved nib lying
like a blooded beak
upon darkened leather,
the sea-blue cup he favoured,
filled yet by half with black-bitter
tea
concealed and forgotten atop a spill of dust-edged
journals.
His everyday pipe,
caught between split-spined
pages,
silver-edged tinder-box
set with purpose
by a long-guttered candle.
Even his best walking stick,
forgotten
upon its peg by the door,
(though I note the absence of the thrice-spun
cloak he had of his Da,
and the dust-ghost upon the
night-stand
where once lived his mum’s water-scarred journal)
twisted thong worn
near-restless-through.
‘Tis
hard.
Hard to
see what, after all, is left.
Harder
still to note that which
has
gone.
I
bow my head and tidy the bits of him remaining,
and think upon the harvest of 1420,
the sweet-sad memory of it lying like a bridge
upon the Sea.
