Mid-Life Break

I sat all mourning in the Café that day,

counting fools running workward in their droves.

At five o'clock a taxi took me home.

In my head I met her sister crying -

we had never even spoken on the phone -

and John Paul Griffiths saying how he didn't know.

No babies cooed or wept or any kind of child

came at  last, and I was embarrassed

by old friends turning up to say goodbye

and tell me they were 'sorry she had left us.'

Whispers by the coffin, 'he's gone missing'

Away in Spain, with friends dying in another land.

In these teared and somewhat blurry eyes

I 'watched' the ghostly whole depart

from the corpse, blanched and ravaged by the tumours.

Next morning I knew I should have gone. Lilies

and candles were no solace, I 'saw' her

in a coffin in dark corners. Duller now,

wearing a waxy smile on her tightened lips.

She lay a thousand miles away, among her own.

A mumbled word, a 'sorry' she couldn't hear.

A thousand miles, a mile for every tear.