The title for this post comes from my time as a scrub nurse and the occasional meetings I had to attend where, among other things, cases that had resulted in deaths were assessed.

 

In Passing.

 

Worn and weathered ornaments adorn these avenues of stone

where plots are plainly tended or ignored and overgrown

and moss obcures the names of those interred in crooked,

pressing rows; oblivious to visitors and widow-worried flowers,

to conversation saved to fill the solitary hours.

And I am vaguely troubled that, on passing through the iron gates,

my name may not extend beyond the brackets of my random dates;

that nobody will care enough to answer death's demands,

and what small symbol marks my spot will perish where it stands.

 

 

Memorial.

 

They gather at their table

in the corner of a spartan vault

beneath distillers’ speckled mirrors

advertising ageing malt. They

talk of times, and racing tips and

wipe complaints from laboured lips.

But litany and laughter don’t

dispel the near hereafter.

As they face a fresh obituary

and mourn an absent friend they

raise a glass for one among them

they could not defend.

 

 

The Adaptation.

 

From the front step, as the evening ends,

she waves goodnight to stalwart friends,

then locks the door and slips the chain

and turns to thoughts of Len again.

Stirring bedtime milk she thinks

she’s warmed enough to make two drinks

and wonders widows ever learn

departed husbands don’t return.

 

 

La Vida Local.

 

I walk my former stomping ground

and come by layered ways to find

my rootedness the more profound

for being constantly refined;

so, when I quit my roaming round

my lifeless limbs will lie aligned

and I will be, by nature, found

more geographically defined.