On Asking for the Moon

‘Morning Song’ Sylvia Plath

 

Christmas Day...two thousand seven, that 

off kilter smile...a final gift from you to me,

and mine – your favourite skin cream. 

 

“Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise...” your motto,

your mantra – your lifeline.  

 

And so I massaged your every north, south, east and west; 

saw you skirt the coast...drift toward your island;   

the touch of my hand keeping you afloat.

 

Eyes – once had  sparkled with massed crystals

like the scales of a Blue-Paradise fish, strive

to stay open, as I, too, try to  keep you in my sights

in the unforgiving mist of yesterdays 

and my own self-pity.

 

This wasn’t how it was meant to be; not

what I’d had in mind at all... since that first stutter 

of your eyelids brushing my breast –

 

hungry to learn the dining room drill

in this brand new world you’d been thrown..

headlong into, to become the last thing on earth

I will forget... 

 

High summer, the foot of Dunstable Downs,

circa nineteen seventy five                                                      

 

and you, running in from the yard;

your fringe – fine and feathered as a dandelion;

trenchant,  as you’d grown; born survivors – both.

 

A question mark of a curl toying with your shoulder,

grubby hands cupped, as if in prayer...a baby sparrow, 

fallen from the nest.

 

“May we keep it?” you said, and I taught you

 the art of letting go, as I needed you to teach me...then,

and now.

 

New Year’s Eve, two thousand seven, five o’clock, 

my hand in yours, felt the love affair you had with life, 

fast slipping  through your fingers, as fell petals to the floor – 

French lavender, and lilac

 

in the vase by your bed – caught the light;  

angled stints of a gilt edged blackberry sky, snagged 

on purpure thorns of goodbyes. 

 

Your room – dark, but for the unflinching, 

blue, luminescence of an indifferent T.V. 

 

Half-past eight, and how I wanted to ‘Stop all the clocks...’

lace curtains quivering with the draught

from an open casement window. 

 

Nine o’clock...star-shine on frosted glass...shimmering

liquid silver like a seabird’s wings, risen from the tide; the ether – 

electric with escape...

 

and you – already wedded to the moon;  

 

fly free 

fly high 

fly straight –

little fledgling mine.