Loss

Music is a key to memories, similarly smells, maybe  a voice.   Sometimes it's not just the visuals that return but the whole experience complete with emotions like a particularly vivid dream.

 

There are some sadnesses I wish I could revisit; I was too self-absorbed, too selfish. Too soon the people involved were gone, a whole world with them.  

And so, a piece of music lands you back in the moment, with all the regret of the years since, and nothing you can do but relive it once again.

 

     Those Marches

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away,

 

I think of Brendan,

alone in his sitting room,

flicking channels,

news to news;

dinners collecting on the table.

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away,

 

I think of Peter

who hated cameras;

his reflection

in the mirror

between the bottles.

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away

 

I think of Tom

who asked for a present

on his death bed;

we didn’t have one,

no one else came.

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away

 

I think of John

who asked me to visit,

the gentlest man

I’ve ever known;

I didn’t.

 

When they play those marches,

when they play those marches,

when they play those marches,

the drums tip away.