MICHAEL

It took me 45 years to cry for you
- or is it more for myself
“left behind and not consulted”?
Those years of tearless grieving
desert dry, missing you.

I wrote, all those years ago
“I am a stone, brother;
I laugh as gaily as if I were gay.”

I felt bereft
like part of me was lost, cut off;
- some call growing up and getting real.
As if betrayed,
not knowing what betrayal was
those many years ago;
but something missing
an all pervading ache, a greyness;
adrift and unbelonging.

You were a serious little boy
a runner, archer and chess-player
a creative speller and free-thinker
with sticky-out ears.
You had hardly dropped out
before you dropped back in:
INto that other zone.
One moment
at peace and in love
the next, on a marble slab.
whisked off to your heavenly home.

There is now another serious little boy
called Michael
with sticky-out ears…….