Family Devotion

All I have to say goes unheard.
I want to show you Revelation,
Prophecy on the line of the receding tide,
A crab harbouring thugs in Adullams cave,
The gull, rare in its white wings
Burning but not consumed,
A Voice calling from the rain, the wind.

Much sooner than I’d have liked
We make it to your destination;
There is Providence in the offering of warm drinks,
Forgiveness in biscuits shared
Silently across the picnic table,
Crumbs falling to the starlings
Speaking another language underneath.
I do not speak another word.

Lip Reading

Browsing comments from the past,
The sort of thing you write
To those who mourn;
‘Always had a joke to tell’,
‘Will miss his happy smile’,
‘Much loved by all he knew’.

We accept these platitudes
With grace, these honest lines
From club and pub
And charitable trust,
The hospital where he passed
Away, the lip-reading class.

This last lament from the hard of hearing
Reads of ‘how he persevered’.
I see him leaning in
Keening for all the many words
That might have been. The unannunciated
Vowels and consonants of misused time
The silent, shaped, – ‘too late, ‘too late’.