Remembering the dead

My cousin died by his own hand ten years ago today, aged 22.  This is a poem I wrote for him then.  Nothing has changed.


Prawle Point

Don’t imagine for a moment

that I didn’t think of you

just because the sun spilt honey

and the tumbling lanes drowsed,

mesmerised by flowers.

True, my memory tripped

like wind through wheat fields,

chasing Chinese whispers, wild rumours,

only to eddy on itself

as we stumbled down the blinded combe

towards your crucible of fleet, elusive dreams,

where, beyond a crest of hawthorn,

a cormorant kept the look-out

from its lonely pedestal.

Basalt angel?  Reliquary urn?

My eyelid flickered in the glare. 

Fifteen days ago we launched

your narrow, wooden boat.

Flags flapped low, taut wires and lines

against high masts tolled your passing.

And one black cardigan, forgotten,

lifted from a railing on the breeze,

as hapless – hopeless – as the sail

of the Athenians’ homebound ship.

Deborah Harvey © 2001, 2011