Black Willow

To know
I will never see your face again –
hear your voice, be inspired by your smile
is something I cannot conceive of.

Only yesterday we talked. You
who wouldn’t give in. Each day you woke up
was a bonus. Well, that’s the way you saw it.
Me? I’d have thrown in the towel way back when.

Today I walked the dog, took our path through the woods –
the one with the bench by the tree where you carved
our names, and the stagnant pond.

Daisy’s favourite ball still floats there.

‘Life goes on’. Sick to death of people saying that to me,
because the transience of it all makes no sense, no sense at all …

Not if it hangs on such a fragile thread
as hangs the catkin from the willow.