At Rest

He can be found at the cemetery most afternoons
for as long as he can stand the heat, or the cold.
By the hour he sits there
on a small iron bench in sight of her grave.
It is inscribed in memory of another,
yet it seems meant just for him.

On the rare days we share the bench
I am always the first to grow restless,
to suggest home.
For me it is an ominous place,
unkind.

I talk to her, he says warily,
searching my face for signs of judgment,
worry.
Talk away, I tell him;
take comfort where you can.

Together they had forged a life
in a country not their own,
bathed their babies, taken joy.
She was the only one who knew him
when he was young.

From Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered ( 2011).

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Gold-Can-Stay/triciamccallum

 

About the Poet:
Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is an award-winning writer and poet and frequent Huffington Post Blogger. She is the author of two books of poetry: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered in 2011. McCallum also publishes fiction. Her short story “Clutter” won a Toronto Star award for fiction writing. But her unrivalled passion is poetry and is particularly proud to have twice won the member-voted poetry competition at goodreads.com. Her poems are about commonplace things, McCallum says, but she adds that they are not necessarily simple. “The abstract never drew me,” McCallum explains. “I don’t think in those terms. The day-to-day world and all its supposed mundane detail provides me more than I need. “To me it’s not mundane. To me it’s magic.” Read more of Tricia’s work at:
www.triciamccallum.com
www.huffingtonpost/triciamccallum

 

Photo by Matias Cruz.

 

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