Standing at the eastern gate of heaven
Ancient Egypt’s holy sycamore
was the threshold
between life and death.
Planted beside the grand
and ordinary tombs
they believed its transporting bark
ferried their dead faster from the dark.
Sycamore breath gauzing your grave
in news reports brought home
thoughts of flesh and blood
so changed
and changing with time’s tread:
stormy sementine dawns
lifting them up from a basket of roots
to the luminous beyond.
Some nineteen months since your death
visiting for the first time
awkwardness stops my tongue
forming your name
noting instead
black glar behind the hedge
the broken headstones left nearby
their tiny narratives gone with the weather.
A lengthening lull in talk seems set to last.
Then the rich warm tones of a wren
whirring closer than ever before
breaks the silence.
Troglodytes troglodytes
leaving the lark
to dig the depths of blue
delves deep an old marker’s mossy crevice
Sounding clear complex notes at day’s done
the winter wren will not rise
on a tree’s frosted breath.
His sky is stone
starry with gold and umber
its moon the colour of shadows.
The cave dweller’s song
echoing hope through fracture and fissure.
A forager in the dreaming efflorescent dark.