I am aware that I haven’t posted for over a month. The past weeks have seen my world changed by a bout of illness and the death of my mother, from both of which I am now, thankfully, recovering. My philosophical side has taken these events as a means to take stock, change and, I hope, understand. The following poem was written a couple of days after my mum’s passing and the pinhole photograph fitted the mood perfectly as accompaniment.

“At Sea”

I woke this morning.

You were still gone.

The letters continue to fall on the mat;

soon they, too, will stop,

cease to flap like fish

on the deck of a boat

returning with quota.

As our lamps come on tonight,

TV stars you would watch

will shine like all our souls,

strutting and fretting their hour.

Perhaps tomorrow their last post

will land in an empty hall,

their children take breath and say,

“They lived life to the full,

they did their best.”

And the trawler will sail,

spill its catch, take these lives

to some port else,

free of sound and fury

where the lights still twinkle

at sea.