Domonic
This time of year I think of you the most:
springtime, when I'm in love with everything.
Behind the bar you liked on Candlemaker Row
the kirkyard laburnums are budding;
come the summer they'll be yellow Texas hairdos
dropping pods of blossom on the old graves.
I'm amazed that I still observe the days
since you went wherever you went;
that I still want to tell you things. Like:
I look for you in crowds of out-of-towners,
and in spring sometimes there'll be a man
who makes me pause, heart spilling its blooms.
But there was only ever one of you,
born with a misspelled name even Google
corrects. Like: see? I'm searching.
Like: I've learned there are collectors who want
only broken things – porcelain so loved that
when it smashed, the cracks were sealed with gold.
That's how I was broken by your going:
although it was a wrecking, it was also
a making-better. Like: thank you.
Like: what I'd choose to do with you right now
is go to the bar in the big white afternoon,
no one else drinking, the window seat a giftbox
of jewelled light. Laburnum light: amber
in the tall glasses lit up like bulbs. And after,
I could walk away, every break and closure glowing.
Claire Askew