vale Gail Hennessy

 

be kind

vale Gail Hennessy

 

a paddock of first thing mist

a first sun

 

as ever through silver shone

kind eyes

 

day hunts up

ever caring

 

there’s sanctuary in words

 

sometimes I dream of the gone

 

they speak

sometimes I understand

 

it’s just the heart taps out

a kind of Morse

a landscape

moonscape too

 

it’s far away in words where we’ve been

 

to the soil, to the air is a great returning

 

we have this haggard moment to cope

world shifted from its axis

we know it won’t come right again

 

and it’s this choice we make to live

each to own vanishing

 

late bees visit

too hot for early Spring

but we’ll flower

 

I’ve never been in that backyard

but it’s alive in me

 

the blue satin

and the butcher bird courting

 

and so come back among us

in a tune, a smile

in a garden where

by careful observation 

 

and it’s hard to keep looking into the light

but we have to

 

there’s one more day broken to this

still with us where this heart went down

 

then the right words come

now and then applause

 

telling all still home, still here

 

still with

of course

a fantasy to think one could cease

the memory of mist

 

the picture in the poem

so many touched

 

and I’m not who I was, you know

 

I glow with just your having been

a gift the world still spins

 

eyes teaching us

all kind

and that we too may be

 

ever shining now