“I wasn’t sure if you would want this”
tentative gift of a book
of poems ‘of grief and healing’.
“I seem to remember you like poetry.”
I do, and I like poems about hard things
so eventually I read the book
and start to write my own poems again.
‘Not how are you but who are you?’
you asked, that first pub Sunday
after my husband,
and with this prescient question
a lifelong friendship was born.
I wrote, oh how I wrote,
a poem, triumphant,
heralding the future.
declaring myself.
Now after another husband,
and you, and she, all gone
we two remaining friends
see to your estate and sell your flat.
Inside the empty room for the last time
the tears flow and we hug,
two widows, I suppose, and yet
that isn’t who we are.
She and I must answer
‘Who are you?’ afresh,
no you, or her or him
to bounce ideas and love.
Floundering about in a pond
grown too big with too few
friendly fish
it’s not so easy.
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