I’m relieved you’ve been spared embalming:

You look like yourself, just elsewhere –

Your energy dispersed, around your house,

Whispering in the trees, in the air.
I recall the young woman who suited her grey hair,

Whose smile radiated the length of Dale Road,

Who hailed me down to say, ‘Hello, I’m Helen’.

It must have been 1997, and we became friends.
Friends and fellow travellers, fellow strugglers,

Who’d talk about their addictions, about the redemptive

Nature of art, and how life is a day-by-day proposition.

See you Helen, in the night sky, in the wild beyond.