017 You are not here

I have more than just a school connection with All Saints. This one is about my twin sister, Susan, who, unlike me did not survive a somewhat traumatic birth.

You are not here

You are not here,
this earthen womb
is but a place
where your shed skin
a cast-off chrysalis
had its last embrace.
I cannot cry for you:
you have not known sorrow's dark mantle
or disappointment's piercing lance,
nor has act or admission hobbled you
in their restricting chains.
I cannot cry for you:
though we share our tiny world -
a space I exchanged for wider vistas:
sun's colourful waking and sleeping'
bright day and midnight moonlight,
dawnly choruses and fleeting silences.

I miss you when an incautious eye
slips upon shower mat to spy
your mottled signature
above my heart.
It's then I wonder
what may or might have been
if untimely chance
had not dictated that we part.
But I cannot cry for you.
All I wonder at through darkly glass,
eternal things and mystery,
as yet are yours not mine.
All that separates us is not death
or worm or clumps of earth
but the ambiguity of time.
I do not come here often
nor do I mourn for you
and tears that come,
as come they do,
are more for me than you.

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