Miss

Some flowers there. White.
Indian white. White
from a hedgerow, tight twined,
snapped out.
I thought “Yes, better wild” as
I ‘saw’ her - sat beside the fire
in her box room; the glow
around the hearth;
a glance across the room – just eighteen.
Strange – she’d’ve been
almost sixty now.

Almost peremptory,
the way he said it,
“Miss” – (Miss, miss, miss what?) – “Miss
was involved in a car accident
last night. She did not survive.
She will not be coming back.”
Three minutes. Three minutes’ silence.
Was there?
“It happened at the end of Meadow Lane.
The far end. The distant end.
At the T-junction.”
Strange. Strange, how you can say to the inner soul:
“No, no, don’t go there.”
Maybe, easier at nine.
It all came back to me -
a year or two ago, as looping
tendril, as light chance
through dim aquaria.

She wasn’t double-barrelled, you see,
like that haughty pair – there,
before she came,
so gentle, so fine,
in that little time
- that brief time