Christine West
Coming Back
for Joy
The mouse showed her,
mangled and claw-torn;
later the cat taught her,
lying stiff in a gutter,
that dead means dead.
Gone.
Her father, close-questioned,
who’d seen it all,
told her how it would be:
without pain, floating
light-lifted, through pink air,
the sound of winged people
singing in endless absence.
Could this endlessness be broken?
Might not a dead Dad
come back for a holiday, a break
from up there, fast-tracking home?
Quietly, smooth-soothing her,
he said, yes, it could be so.
She saw them, clear as today:
the dead coming back,
stepping down from clouds.
Her father first, hopping off,
the way they do from tube trains,
holding a small suitcase,
wearing that long fawn gabardine
and waving to her, smiling.
Page(s) 22
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