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Susan Wicks

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The Day of Your Father’s Funeral

Farncombe/Mont Noir.

for J.H.

It was a humanist funeral, you told me, chosen
because of belief, or the lack of it, the day golden,
end of September while to speeches and feasting
the players rode in on their gleaming engine;

the readings appropriate, taken from a large library
of inspiring words, as with a wrist-flick
the juggler sent the white ball spinning
and the glass tipped backwards. The bare-chested showman

spewed fire into the trees.Your son read something
for love, the verses blurring
as you held your daughter, while in the corner
of our eye the white-feathered creatures

danced gravely on stilts, dipping their graceful
horns and beaks, his face a boy’s, his story ending
as it was meant to, full circle, gently
as rain fell from overhead, the sky cloudless.

 


Susan Wicks’ most recent collection, The Clever Daughter, was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot and the Forward Prize. She in now working on a third novel. She teaches at the University of Kent in Canterbury, where she is responsible for the Creative Writing programme.

 

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