Monday 25 August 2008

For My Mum

Snapshots

By Mark Cantrell


Time is cruel that way.
The way it takes you ever
Further from where we stand.
You’ve gone into yesterday now,
Forever, and we must move forward
Into tomorrow, and the day after, until
Our own yesterdays arrive to receive us.



Yesterday, the intangible moment
That took you, now holds you anchored to the past,
That unique instant that was forever yours.
We cannot touch, we cannot reach,
We can only glimpse through
The frozen photographic portals, the particles of time,
Snapped and snared in chemical emulsifiers
To paint a portrait of what once was.

Old photos, that’s where yesterday remains,
Where memory finds solace
There, in that metaphysical place of lived moments.
You find companionship restored among old friends and family;
The grandfather you worshipped
The mother you doted,
United together in that place where no Mind
Still living can venture.

It’s a soul space, metaphorical, a hearth and home of a kind.
They’ll look after you, guide you to rest and calm tranquillity,
The inhabitants of generations gone.
Time takes you nearer to them now,
We carry you in hand towards the meeting place, in the urn,
Safe, with some tokens of our feelings bestowed inside,
Nearer to their yesterdays,
Where once you all lived in shared and overlapping days of living.

In that, time is perhaps a kindness after all,
And reserves its cruelty for those you left behind.
So it takes us on, this tide of time, rising, until it ebbs and takes us in turn
Back into the depths and currents of yesteryear.

In time it will be kind to us,
In time it will take us
Into the gap of yesterday,
Where we will return to be among you
In old photographs and someone’s loving memory.

Until then,
Goodbye, Mum, we miss you.


Mark Cantrell,
Manchester,
15 July 2008


Copyright © July 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Category: POETRY

0 comments:

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More