“Old Loves” © Mike Absalom January 4th
2012.

I have never met a living
person who is dead.

Today I saw the daughter of
the gravedigger again
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
I would have spoken, for I
have things to share,
but old loves, like cold lava
in the street,
clog up the chambers of our hearts
and make us into whimpering archaeology.

I am sure I saw the daughter
of the gravedigger,
walking towards me through a
field of black horses.
They swayed like black tulips
in the wind
and from time to time she
disappeared among them
as a boat into a purple sea.

From an old bouquet, dead and
tumbled roses
litter the bedroom window
sill and are as wrinkled and cold
as the sheets of a love bed where
by now
only the most minute traces of
your DNA
could possibly remain as
evidence.

I saw the daughter of the
gravedigger walking towards me,
wading through a field of
black horses.
At first I had banked on some
grim scenario,
but now I see that she had
only come
to mock the number of years
in my deposit account.
She swung a whip in her hand,
and wore a high ridiculous hat
crowned with black ostrich
feathers.
Her eyes were very sharp
today, like broken glass.

She did carry a whip in her
hand, of that I am sure,
but when she got closer I saw
it was a spade.

Still, one of the more
comforting aspects of Death
is that it only happens to
other people.
I have never spoken to a
living soul who was dead, have you?

Apart, of course, from the gravedigger’s daughter.