The moon making a lattice of branches tonight,

Outside the window of my room

Seems strangely cold; Somehow, I wish that you

Were here to warm it. Impossible, though,

Even though tomorrow is your birthday,

Cancelled out by your being dead

Thirty-four years.

 

Thirty four years, full stop, and yet I feel

You still very close tonight, as the wind

Murmurs the moonlit branches. How did we go

So wrong, so soon? No one knows

Apart from the mason perhaps

Who may have paused, cutting your dates,

So young? Is this right?

And checked, then carried on.

 

What the mason did not know is that

Sometimes God will look down on the Humber

And see two people walking side by side, think

That’s not right! And take appropriate action.

 

Which is how I come to celebrate your birthday alone

And our love, such as it was allowed to be,

Alone, apart from the cat’s company, sitting here,

Past midnight, in a darkened house,

Wishing you the very best of heaven.

 

And sad that this year my roses

On your grave, under the latticed moon,

Fifty miles away, on a summer night,

Over the Humberhead levels,

Are only metaphorical.

 

You do not need my roses in heaven, anyway;

You have only to think of roses, to be surrounded by them

 

And right now, I have only to think of you,

And the moon, making a lattice of branches, tonight.