Other Colours, Other Clocks
After W.H Auden

A summer funeral home in a pound shop Essex town.
The flowers are chemical, the doves bleached pigeons.
We are a family in conjured grief, gasping at heated facts,
tasting an electrical breeze. “There was bloody water down 
his sink and ripped up reminders surrounding his bin.”
Here is love’s finality, its knife, needle and rumour mill –
scarring the skin of what we believed possible within his life.
Now we are four children. Bewildered, glued together by photo 
albums and staring at each other’s shoes. Our memory fused 
by his sleight of hand street corner card trick con. He is gone,
and tonight alone, a deep ticking will come flicking into private
rooms, cutting our time into slices to be served on other clocks. 
   Come Christmas, we’ll know this for sure. 
   How we followed his star. Our feet red raw.