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 .
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