My Father’s Grave
St Agnes Eve

The afternoon cold enough
To freeze the purest love.
Lips crack on sleet-grazed faces,
Grave stones twinkle,
Grapple with hoar frost.
A bare moon stares,
With grey indifference.

Eyebrows frosted, fingers numb,
I pull a skeletal flower
To watch its stark leaves splinter.
Everything is destined for dust.

In the space between his grave and mine
I try to revive a whitened finger,
I close my eyes and try to remember
All the love of a son for his father.

One day my bones will be locked
In this ice, in the permafrost,
My own words, pinched to nothing
My own cold dates decoded
And all my memories lost.