My sister'd placed blue primroses
in line with the temporary cross
where my mother's hands might be
supposed to be -
six feet below and moldering
over my already-moldered father -
sent pic to me on Messenger.
But the grave is no resting place -
and rotting shells no mother,
no father to cling to;
nor land truly sanctified that
ivy-netted churchyard walls enclose.
On the height of Rawhead hill
where we paused a little while
Robin came to perch on a birch twig,
flit to another, bright eye blinking.
In that commonplace grace, it was,
all who walk out know some days,
they stood within me.
.............
It's the commonplace experience I want people to consider.
However, to see behind the scenes, the title is from Andrew Marvell's'To His Coy Mistress' -'The grave's a fine and private place, / but none, I think, do there embrace.' When my mother was lowered in, on top of my father's coffin (been there 20 years) the last short 'envoi' section of a long love poem of my father's to my mother, written before we were born, was read out, reducing us all. The last two lines are:
See, from the hedgerows the robin is singing: -
'Love outlives Autumn; Love has no ending.'
