Unfinished Sentence

UNFINISHED SENTENCE At Sunday prep my boarding school teacher criticising my unfinished sentence . No communicated thoughts, no words . Sentenced to life at fourteen , away from home and you my life sentenced in solitary . A death sentence commuted to life , both imprisoned in separate cells , separated from you by streams of tears . At Christmas a chestpain took my father without closure or goodbye , a rude undeserved end . My heart’s-loss , not even found for days , you are not really dead, across the Styx wandering lost along tearless roads in darkness . Alone and lost my mother , family , left bereft . The warm breath of dairy cows hangs over empty farmland and a winter cemetery on this cold Sunday morning , with grandsons who resemble you . Only I know their hands are your big hands - are my hands - placing here a token poinsettia , red-toned , roots swirling inside their pot of earth . You grew them in masses and my childhood Christmas was complete . Their leaves drop with the cold, dead but not really dead . They will return next Christmas and your spirit comes back again . Your big hand is in mine, but I am unled and abandoned and I talk to you in poinsettia tones , continually coming back to your unfinished finished life , frozen like the stream of memory in my mind .