POEM

 

What saves me of topping myself today:

my cat doing a handstand by the window,

Dalida singing Bambino at dawn,

the beauty of contrails streaming along the blue sky,

the smell of horse manure in the streets, 

the fulsome warbles of a thrush in the morning,

the siren-cry of ambulances that carry not my corpse,

the rain-scented beams of the sun,

that William Carlos Williams' line:

the night passes, and never passes,

the loud laughing of mum in 1978

while sawing at her Singer,

the last smile you blew like a feather

into the air before waving a fond adieu,

the last spoor of kiss you left 

on my bristly stubble...

Love passes and never passes.