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After the funeral, on my own in Matumi

Tomorrow I leave Matumi. In good hands. Gazani and Ponani packed all mom and dad's photos and statuettes and pictures and personal items away to be stored in the cottage.

Still the house is full of things. I still have to email everyone with thanks and send them on our addresses and phone numbers in London. I donated all mom's medicines to Mary at the hospice and I swam in the pool in a storm about half an hour ago.

I've cooled off a bit from the heat, but I'm getting a little tense now, for some reason.

Tomorrow the stone masons come and fix a large plaque to a huge, strategically placed, flat sided stone. Then I am off with Leigh to the airport.


* * *

I wandered around the house for nearly a week. I found some lines dad had written on the fridge. Dad's lines seemed to sort themselves out into two poems.

Mourning in fridge magnets

We have arisen from our cooling bed.
Together we dressed.
We are powerful
And robed for our departure

Feeling Languid
We await the storm
And watch the sad sky fall apart
To make a portal to our new home

The time I have spent away from her is over.

Now, please watch, please observe, I commend you.
Please recall our words carefully and with love.
Or the heave and swell of the day’s business
Will wash us too quickly into the void.

Mourn yes, even scream, but do so with restraint.

Show your iron,
My beloveds
And face the road ahead

Love gardens and still, elaborate forests
With shadows that shine back with painted light from behind death.

Because that’s where we’ll live
Not too far away.
For we have joined the moon club

And if you return to sit here
Our trees will bow to touch you
From across the welling up of night.

Now I feel a chest pain, the fluttering,
The pounding of my heart and blood - for a while
Soon it’s followed by a sweet sleep

And now comes sordid blue-green effusing death.


On the white heat of your breath

And so, on the white heat of your breath,
I go sailing.

I lather and lick your breasts into billows
And kiss the wavy furrows of your bare underarms.

With my lips and tongue.

Because beauty is a sailing ship.
That sails with a proud mast
In your seas.

Soft and and petalic, now, your body clings to mine
And you chant, urgently
Your love,

Love

And we go sailing.

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