…i.m. Asa (foolish enough
to have been a poet) Benveniste, the tall
skinny tree of you felled in the churchyard
at Heptonstall among the Queen Anne’s Lace.
It was a Friday, it was the thirteenth,
sunset, Easter, and you you would have
timed it differently, you would have sat
right down and writ yourself a letter.
This is for all the lives we did not live,
mooching in old harbours with the tides,
driving home across the rainswept moorland,
At the border will be stones and again
white birches, the one magpie of sorrow,
you in your black cap surprised and amused,
you with two flowers where the road runs out.