In the North East, you told us,
In times you could remember
It was customary to clean the house
With care
To begin the new year afresh.

We, replete around the rubble
Of Christmas platters and the litter
Of paper crowns and jejune jokes,
Smiled our approval of the sagacity
Symbolism and sobriety of such
Formidable folk.

And vowed to try
Sometime, but not yet,
Not yet and I
Poured another Port
To toast all the years
Stretching ahead.

As Summer grew in
On
The weekend before
Your bitter liver burst you
You had the house cleaned and cleared of
The forgotten fragments of
Three lifetimes.

And the jumble of living
Vividly.

Directing a hired team of deep cleaners
You were busy in the business:

Supervising
Room by room
Purging the house
Paring away the accretions
Surgering the coagulations
Of gradual gathering
And the casual collections
Of salty summer stones.

Ordering
The placing of the finest pieces
In happier positions
The better to shine
In their newly polished prime.
(The harmonium humming
With re-dignified pride)

Your disease at bay
For a couple of days
Preparing for the hospital stay
With positive glee
At the thought of returning
To that gleaming place.

Your beautiful face
Drawn down to the bone and yellowing,
Your belly still swelling
With cancer's casually re-created curve
Of pregnancy
At a fruitful age

But,
Directing operations,
The prospect of starting afresh
Lit
A flame in your eyes
Incandescent
At clean up time
At the prospect of starting afresh
The day before you went
To be treated and drained and die.

When you came home
More clearing had been done
In your
Eight days away -
The harmonium hauled
From the downstairs hall
To spare a space for
The undertaker's trestle.
Your coffin nestled
Between the flat disc floral
Constructs of death
And the vigorous vivid
Ramshackle palm
That had tried for the sun
For the fifteen years
We had loved
And fought
Together.

At clean up time
That palm had twenty seven years
And you but forty nine.
Now six weeks on
Since your bitter liver burst
The harmonium gathers dust
Unplayed now
At the back of a store
Where music is taught
And I water the palm
In this new place of mine.

© John Mackie July 4th 2006