Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses
And to die is different from what anyone supposes...
                                           Walt Whitman

In evening sunlight I come to be beside your grave
where waving grasses emphasise the green
diminish the starkness of raw earth.

It is six weeks since your wicker coffin
threaded with wild flowers
was lowered here. Funeral wreaths are wilted.

Birds sing and the breeze
broadcasts a dove’s liquid call
a winged requiem.

Dandelion, bluebell and celandine,
willow and hawthorn keep you company.
Dock leaves flourish at my feet.

A thistle spreads its early growth.
Sitting on an old beech stump
I notice the shrub someone has planted.

Squirrels are chasing
across the grass. They do not
look at all afraid.

Today your grave is overgrown with grasses,
their tips feather the evening air.
Thistle is shoulder high and menacing.

Shrub has been overwhelmed. I cannot
find it. Wind hisses through full-leafed trees,
makes shadows skim the ground.

Lodged against a thorn
the white froth of cuckoo spit.
Larvae protection.

Sycamore seeds surprise; I touch some of pallid green,
rosy pink on another branch. I’ve only ever seen them
brown, miniature planes of autumn landings.

On the stump Painted Lady waits and Speckled Wood
clings to long grass. As I leave Small White circles
my head. I remember how you brought butterflies to art.

Distant traffic thrum
is background to the stillness.
Life driving ahead.

Early autumn leaves begin to drop; your glade’s
been manicured; earth is scarred by tractor tracks.
Two new companions have come:

Sheila and ‘darling Caroline’ whose ‘Ma and Da’
left a sheath of nineteen kinds of shrubs and trees.
Late lunchtime. Bird song. High sun.

          All the nettles droop.
          Have they at last lost their sting?
          I choose not to test.

In December dusk I return; find new grass,
a yellow primula, dead leaves on sodden ground,
as tracery of branches patterns grey sky.

After earth’s other busy seasons
this green space breathes affirmation.
Nothing here speaks of an end...