THE TOOL BOX

​

I gape through their window towards the foothills

where cloud whispers waft up from a corrie

like revelations from behind an altar.

Late sunshine scanning between storms finds a shack

where once we gathered black-faced sheep.

Suddenly I hear a cello seeping faintly from a wireless

and see him floating towards me across the years

then dancing with her in that wartime photo

to Glenn Miller, evaporating before me.

​

 

In their scullery flooded with urgent light

I open his toolbox of obsolete wrenches

mixed with her jewellery and rusting brooches.

It vibrates, fused with a menagerie of memories,

and jolts a compulsion to sprinkle their grave

with this kaleidoscope of refractions,

to forgive him for the sins he never committed,

the way she flung up her bones to adorn his coffin

after everything he had done and not done.