For Steven
April 19, 2014
On this dark and weepy day
A fury of pink petals storm against my cheeks
And rain stains my eyes with what I know now to be tears.
This flurried April day you would have been (unbelievably) 40,
That turning point, the gateway to a decade, one of reckoning or regret.
That little joy who touched a rabbit’s ear one Easter day,
Or ran from roosters or cried out from tops of trees. Forty.
You didn’t stay around to watch us grey
And bend and grow quite quirky over tea and buns
How you would have laughed….
And grown a paunch or whiskers or married twice
Or bought a Cadillac and learned to sail.
Beloved son of my beloved friend…
How I have bit my tongue to feel
And pulled the blinds against our grief.
You were such hope, more hope than
My lad ever was.
A flock of aunties drunk with life awaited your arrival,
Paraded through the hallways, made sketches in the dawn.
So many dreams came with you.
So many dreams dashed when you left.
And yet the love endures in strange unspoken bonds.
Know this—my heart bursts with this storm of petals and you are by my side.
