What We Left Unsaid

A poem

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

You won’t find many poems here under my name. I am not a poet. Although I am a lover of poetry. But I wrote this some time ago when I had to write a poem for a course. I was initially inspired by the final image in James Joyce’s short story, The Dead, with the snow falling on the gravestones and all over Ireland. I used the images from a cemetery very near us where I sometimes walk the dogs. I then switched the scene of the poem to an old colonial cemetery I visited in Calcutta. My dad was stationed in Calcutta during the war and I had a photo of him in India. When he died he had no grave because he left his body to medical science. My parents divorced when I was 12 and, after that, I didn’t see so much of him (See, Like my father before me, I broke up my family). I was in my mid twenties with a young family of my own when he died and, at the time, it bothered me that his remains had no resting place.

I tried using the poetic form of iambic pentameter or blank verse (except for the half lines). Tried being the operative word.

What We Left Unsaid

Snow falls over tombstones, shrouding the past

in graves and green shoots to soften blank skies

and a lunar gloom that swallows the soil.