Dear Kate, kind daughter

I remember mad joy, seeing the sulphur lights bloom one by one on his hearse, that he was coming back to us again, our little boy...

In snow-flake silence of the December dawn in the empty chapel we reached out to him, but only seemed to push him down. Deus ex-machina hummed assent; flame annealed him, made a memorial - a curb like that which killed him.

He's been alone so long, so far away, his Autumn our Spring; his cold night our warm day, but the bulbs you planted bloom, you say, and year upon year brave crocus will bring their solace from that artless earth.

- from Stirring Stuff (1993)