John-Ward Leighton

ARTEFACTS

Artefacts
my speed dial
contains the name
and numbers of the dead.

I can’t go there
without tears
and the feeling that
they are dying yet again.

At this time they drift
in and out of conscious thought
after all now that they are gone
it’s about all we have got.

You wonder
if the other life is real
and the rational side says,
“Don’t be silly.”

They are no longer
part of the visual
and can only occupy
my imagination.

I often,
in dreams,
talk with them
really a conversation with myself.

The melancholy
of it overwhelms the facts
and the blues going through my speed dial
looking at my artefacts.