Duck Breast for Dinner

 

We last had duck breast for dinner

the night before my uncle died.

The wettest May Day I can remember,

my forty-second birthday. Like Christmas,

 

we waited for family to phone or arrive.

No chance of a walk until after they'd gone,

when we passed what we little knew

in a couple of months would be their road end.

 

Neither did we know then, or did we?

that tomorrow we'd get a call of a different kind,

not news of an arrival but of a departure,

perhaps to a place some people call home.

 

The last but one bank holiday,

the last time but one I saw Jennifer.

Too small to attend her great-uncle's funeral,

she turned four on the day he passed away.