Losing You Copyright © Jen Overett 2011

You would quietly admire, I hope,
my reach for calm and order
before I even greet each waking day
or bruise the cold bright morning
with the sad blindness of thought.

Yet I am blustering in my fluster
just to hold you, dad, and would enter
your silence now, if I could, before you
fold yourself up into a pocket hanky,
or just fade away for good, what? eh?

For this is the journey of love
and when I enter that road, I see
that I have always travelled it,
how your flesh is my own,
its gravitational pull shared by us all;

and that it is of course autumn,
pulled up at a place
of relentless pathos, of
spills, tablet dispensers, age spots;
calendar fit to burst with nurses,

laundry, and repeat episodes
of Time Team. When I've done crying
I will take time to lie down on firm earth,
look up at your good gift of sky
through slowly falling leaves.