here, have a poem

30/06/24

my best friends’ burials

the love you lose from someone you know
can be found again in the smile of a stranger.
teeth like beacons in the dark,
gaps, crooked, a smile to say,
"you are always seen”,
like the way birds sing to us from the trees

"love is never wasted”, my best friend says,
in the face of all the ways grief comes to me

in waves,
one day, anger, the next, despair,
the next, a gentle closing of the heart 
and then the next,
an opening again, as fast as the wings
of an insect

"I was thrown from a house into nature,”
I say, and she replies,
"and if we are nature,
you were thrown back into yourself”

nature mirrors love back to us,
jelly-fish like gentle hearts beating,
spirals like third eyes seeing
and on the third day of grief,
I realise love is never lost
love only transforms

a closing of the heart
is an opening to the universe

my best friend picks up every dead animal she finds,
and gives it a burial.
I ask if I can take a picture with my camera, and she says,
“is that okay?”

I try to explain my Dad was a Scientist,
and to me,
nature is something to be documented and left alone

but I am presented with a new way of thinking,
and this time, I receive it

later, in my hometown, I tell my father over coffee
"how it once was is not how it always has to be”

a dog runs up to me on the road
white and pristine and pedigree,
I’m late, I’m tired, I want to walk away
but I think of my best friends’ burials,
so throw my arms out wide, and say,
“where’s home?”
and it takes me there,
leads itself back 

and I think, “where would I go?”
maybe I’ll never have one of my own
maybe home is where-ever piano keys are
or ‘the place I go when I’m alone’
as that newton faulkner song blaring
in the airport goes

well, I need to trust
that only I can lead myself back