Seams of Repair

Loss can’t be measured by numbers – the people you once belonged to, the floorboards of a house that was once a home, or the hours you travelled to get away. Although you try to count the possessions you couldn’t keep or the number of steps from the street to the door, zero is the only answer you ever get. But this year you find the pieces of that old pottery bowl, pushed to the back of a cupboard, long thought too broken for repair. Four odd-shaped pieces that still fit with each other. Maybe you never tried to put them together, after the fall. Maybe then you saw only wastage. But now you hold each piece in place, your fingers carefully spread, one by one, tracing the edges with gold-flecked glue. If there was once breakage, now there is more than repair. Fragments bound in beauty, measured only by what was lived and can be transformed.

A line of smoke above the chimney and an empty glass, unsteady at midnight, ready to count the rainy hours till dawn. Water everywhere harrowing ground.  If you put words on paper in this weather they’d run down the margins and out of the house. Away. Altogether. Lost. Leaving only the smell of burnt sausages in the kitchen and a stale loaf of bread. So, instead, you’re waiting for the paleness of sky beyond the gate you refuse to open, remembering Mozart and marzipan chocolates. A red paper flower reduced by rain. Coffee spilt on the night table. A gritty residue. That too sweet sensation on the tongue. Words you want to spit out. The creeping patina of sadness and regret. Rinse with sweet water.  Take the bridge over the litany of the stream. Listen to the singers standing in the dark. Watch the burnished glow until the hush and sweep of the great wooden door renders sleep. Latch it softly as you leave.

On my way to you

a man brings flowers to a departing friend

as they smile into each other’s eyes.

Sweet peas and roses sweeten diesel and brine.

I look away, to the hillside, its patterned houses,

blue sheets and white towels pixelate against a crimson wall

rectangles becoming triangles becoming squares

as dark trees scatter in disarray.

The rim of the hill fades and brightens under the breaking sky.

A pair of socks flaps up and down like train signals on the line.  

And here are the nuns hurrying to catch the boat

in their white habits and fluttering veils,

each one carrying a small black case

for whatever else they live by.

Once, you threw a ball into the pool.

The swimmers, all striving to reach it,

churned the blue water to white.

Nothing stays forever still, not even memories.

You never lit candles or brought flowers for me,

but sometimes you carry home small loaves

fresh from the baker and the cheeses

you know I like,

and we lay them out on the table

in a pattern of our own making.