Mark,
my words
were never going to bring you back

The stories
the poems
the reflections
about you
some published
(seeking comfort,
or kudos?)
were never going to
see you walking
through the back door again
at Minerva Road
in your long hair
and your blue jeans

Mark,
your words
stay with us
five younger siblings
Free verse
Handwritten on foolscap
Found afterwards
They are something to behold

Words on love and nature
Oceans, sunsets, rapture
Revolutions
Uni life, city life
Consumerism
Starving Biafrans
Ambition, hitch-hiking
The Beatles
The  young woman with the red hair…

Mark,
your words
were typed and collated
by your mate Daryl
walking across the desert of grief
one letter, one word, one comma at a time

‘Circles’ the booklet was called
Forty pages
About fifty copies
John drew the cover
Mum and Dad
wrote a foreword
keeping it brief
What was there to say
except what you’d said
in poems seeking
a compassionate world
in words pouring from your pen
raining onto the page
across just a few short years

So slender, ‘Circles’
almost hides itself
in my bookshelves
at times disappears amongst
Chekhov, Steinbeck,
Bruce Dawe, Jock Serong,
Elena Ferrante, Alice Pung,
Tony Birch, Favel Parrett…

Mark,
your words
Are, like you,
Always with us

 

from page 37…