Pacing

One warm small body in arms
the other - cold - away up the stairs.
The scrubby garden and the shed, where the cat
had gone to die days earlier, just about summed it up
as he went about the darkest art of all.

He was a small old-crow-of-a-man
slipping through the front door with the tools of his trade
shrouded in secrecy; Dickensian, one who might follow
behind a horse-drawn hearse-coach
the cocky feathered horse’s heads bouncing almost jauntily
but for the slow-pacers at the back in top hats.

But pacing was a distraction, a handy device,
it’s rhythm stilling an unquiet mind full of disbelief -
could the zipping of the bag (a binbag but for the zip)
really be heard down in the scrub?
Or did that come later, conjured by memory?
-
And how can a mind be still under such circumstances?
Well, the pacing came in handy,
it was life continuing, cruel - yes,
against everyone’s better judgement - yes but so it goes
and the small warm baby-sister body.

There was a space after the last breath
as there always is, as there is when birth is achieved, the labour done;
a space when stillness is allowed,
a suspended space through which, perhaps,
a soul can slip in or out unimpeded by disbelief or lamentations, the business of living - the ministrations of butcher, baker or undertaker

and in that space it is all beautiful,
it lasts no longer than - who can say how long,
afew seconds?
Perhaps a half hour if some unlikely luck is in the room
and it takes some grace and pacing to find it again

a bit of pacing and some grace to find it again.