Sometimes all the photographs in a room
turn suddenly empty.
Only the houses remain, a few trees,
the desks where people sat
or maybe an umbrella is there
still shading the meal everyone has left.
So tonight there is so much absence in love
when even your laughter is the poetry of pain
as you straighten the collar of the man who was once your husband
as a small boy tries to bearhug the doomed shoulders of a father.
Tonight we walk so carefully around each other's absences
and we each carry not just a ghost
but enough space for a family of ghosts,
enough loneliness, enough death.
Tonight once more you are tucking your two children into bed.
Leaning your face against your daughter's,
your kisses flutter down across her forehead.
Trawling gently beneath your son's wayward smiles
your eyes read
the pain contours shimmering there,
his own private lost continent.
As night slowly extends across the garden
and the moon brightens,
that great white stone above the hills
becoming our one common lantern,
your face softens in the glow of other stars,
your shadow an open silent tree that gathers the horizon
in which your children sleep.
For me here
so many hundred miles away from your quiet breathing
old photos ring me like a chain of loyalties.
I wear my many loves like difficult jewels
that gash and bruise my cheek while I sleep
in a room where I am always
alone before this small shrine to what is lost.
How learn an honest tenderness to kiss goodbye?
You stand there in the hallway watching your children sleep,
your face taut and ravaged from carrying so much emptiness
from room to room,
smoothing down blankets, folding clothes.
And for me who always imagined myself holding you,
loving you,
it's as if your simplest presence is saying
"Which of us ever knows the first thing about love,
the first thing about letting go?"
And today we are putting on smiles
as if we don't all walk around
with great unnamed holes through the centre of ourselves,
busily painting the sun on others' ceilings
to warm the beginnings of their lives.
