Today would be my mother's birthday if she were still here so the poem is dual purpose. It is both based on one of the picture prompts in my 35 Days project and another memorial poem (I do two every year, for my father and my mother).
Bright Lines and DarkThe clicking of a stick upon the ground
behind me as I walk to the shops.
A face that, in its contours,
resembles yours.
Fish cakes at a dinner party
the way you made them.
Cliff Richard on the radio
"I like him," I hear you say.
An amber teardrop pendant in a shop window
like the one you lost.
A smell of lilac in the park -
you sleep in a chair in our old garden.
A folded wheelchair
in the corner of the pharmacy.
A few raindrops spatter against the window:
umbrellas in funereal black.
Lines, bright and dark,
join me to the past.
