National Poetry Day: 4 October 2012

It is possible to "name a star" after someone. Since July last year, there is one called Naomi.



Missing

I missed you by a quarter of an hour.
I should have hurried through my morning shower,
missed eating breakfast in the sleepy sun
or read no emails, or replied to none;
denied the summery procrastination
of that prettier route to my destination.

I miss you from the house when I arrive –
everything silent that was once alive.
The nurses meet me at the stair. Their kind,
practised updating powerblasts my mind.

I miss you from that waxy sleeplike face.
Your thin hands curl without their living grace –
no mischief – tickling doctors, climbing trees
or treating dollies for your own disease.
It's you with self subtracted. And I wail
till my throat hurts me like a swallowed nail.

I'll miss your heart, the things forever not –
the family, the life you’d yet to plot,
the cure you’ll never find – the future star
that cannot now outshine the one you are.

Requiescat Naomi
31 August 2005 – 15 July 2011