I can arrange everything—
Beside your chair there will be
A newspaper, broadsheet,
Your makeshift blanket after a hard day.
Golf magazines, the expensive ones
A bowl of cornflakes
To be enjoyed at midnight,
And a Christmas tree, waiting to be decorated
Although that season has passed.
I’ll scrape the barren lawn with your rusted mower
And wait for the cut-grass smell of spring
That seemed to surround you.
We will follow you out the front door,
The way the sea follows the moon wherever it goes,
And stand in the dark garden, and admire
The spiny silhouette through the bay window,
The forgotten excitement of lights.
I will somehow arrange for our dog, long gone
To paw at your feet, beg to be walked
And I will ask you, finally, who you think my children look like,
And did you know them before they were born?