Poetry
Distant Funeral

Distant Funeral

Posted by Tim Lenton on 17 July 2005 at 13:32

Wind fills our sails on Camden Bay.
You slip away
while timbers crack against the deep.
I miss your final knocking at the door,
your sudden sleep.

Three thousand miles beyond the light
the misty warnings of the owl
fade into eagle’s flight:
you see it now.

Way beyond certainty
outside the rings of time
delivered, blue, in unconditioned air
made whole, you stand and stare,
dance on a pin,
unfold

while gravity retreats
you meet
the sting, the tumble
and the healing cold.

I journey on the margin way,
rock–sitting, brave
to watch the seventh wave decay
and read
your letters from the grave.

Tim Lenton

Poet's comment: I had been visiting my uncle, Frank Lenton, for some time. He was 95, bedbound and very weak but not in great pain physically. But he could not understand, as a Christian, why God should want him to be a burden to his wife and an embarrassment to himself. I meant to visit him in the week before leaving for a holiday in Canada and New England, but somehow there wasn't time. I was shattered to hear just after leaving Camden, Maine, that he had died, and I would miss the funeral. Images in the poem reflect what we were doing in Maine as well as his life.

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Distant Funeral

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