You sit by the pond in the night and watch your father

Crossing the dark grass, blinking through the trees

Toward you, the moon balanced in his hands 

As he ruffles through the night only for you

How long have I been waiting, you ask aloud

May be forever, answers the night. It must be the moonlight

Turning your fingers into white stone, changing the games of youth

Into the colour of faded cotton, blowing them into shreds.

 

Your father is still crossing over the grass, a glimmer of light

In a world soaked in the screaming darkness of withered dreams

As the wind begins to shuffle, holding in its hands

The fragrance of  flowers that have died long ago. 

As he reaches for you, he smiles, only to turn back

As if to go, to bend over to pick up the shears 

Where he left off trimming the ivy; I will wait for you right here,

But your arms flail, weighted in stones too heavy to lift.

You sit in a chair in a empty room, the moonlight

Cradled on your lap like an unwritten sheet of music

That the world has forgotten to play. Do you watch out for me

Do you miss me like I do? The only answer is from the wind

As it ruffles the sheets that you cling to. You turn to what you know

That the world is not your home. And the moon is not balanced

In the hands of a man crossing the dark grass only for you

Or to make you smile. We don’t just abandon the dead. We burn them.