Family 2: Absence by Geoffrey Speechly

When you are young and scarcely formed

You know there’s something else, not just

Your growing body, your heart quick warmed

By a kindly word, a smile, a feeling that you must

Do something, be someone, change the world

But there is an absence here, you do not know

What lies ahead, what may befall, what wind

Will blow the vessel of your mind to north

Or south or east or west; which way’s the worst

Or with good fortune may turn out to be the best

Later, in full flush of man or womanhood

Caught by an interested glance or a word

Or thought or idea, a hook not quite 

Designed another to entrance, your whole being

Can only see the one, the one! Then he or she

Defects, no longer laughs at your loving words 

And goes – another absence. 

Later still, you’ve found your  heart

Live in love;  together  bear the symbols 

Of  you both and watch them grow and grow

Strong   but away; another absence.

We are the parents, now. 

And that's when it hits: when your parents die, 

One and then  the other : now you’re alone.

Though they were old, and nothing knew

of all the things that you now know,

And they are gone, and when your son

or daughter asks "What's this, or that? "

Or "how did granddad get his scar?"

Or "is grandma in Heaven now?"

Then, like the last curtain on a stage

you realise that now  the page of knowing

that your mother or your father,

however frail, was always there, a backdrop for your life;

Is absent for ever, and another, newer  curtain opens, 

Another stage is set, 

And you must step forward, 

For  we  are  the parents, now.

(First Published in a Hightown Writers Anthology A Book of Delights 2016)