If you were still alive
You would be ninety-six tomorrow.
I think of you most days.
Just now, for example, I heard you
Defending the word ‘folk’
When, sometime in the Eighties,
I said it was twee.
Another day, I see you doing the weeding
At my sister’s wedding
And another day still
You’re at church
Hunched over a book
With your fingers in your ears
During the sermon.
Often I hear you sneezing.
When you lay in your coffin
Your face was as darkly speckled as an old deed  —
I think of that, too.
My brain breaks you up like this
But really now you are all together
And not far away.