Leaving

Breakfast is over.

John Humphries is whispering in the background

A sawing noise comes from the garden


Mum has looked through her Get Well Cards again.

Now she’s planning her day.


“What time are you leaving?”


The voice is blurred

Eye contact imprecise


“ About 12.30”


She nods like she’s understood a foreign language


Everything is recorded

In her “Book Of Remembrance”:


Lunch! ( S leaving at 12.30 )

Look for holiday diary

Geraniums

Pay John



Outside I foot the ladder

While my stepfather performs tree surgery on the plum.


I look up at him

An old man in overalls swaying against a blue sky

Crashing the gnarled dead wood down onto the buddleia

With a murmured warning.


Knows I’ve seen.


He paints the fresh wounds with a grey sticky liquid

Gentle as a priest

As I drag branches to the bonfire


His silence says as much as her talk

Her talk as his silence


While I the intercessor of their love

Say goodbye to both of them