Forgetting

 

One by one people slip away
like grebes in quarry water.
You gutter in the wind
and pass, without expression,
the bleeding yew and the
windmill on the hill.
Our best picnic place.

You have folded in on yourself.
You are not the you,
you used to be.
The topography of your
hours has flat lined.

I pass your memories sliding down
as mine force their way up.
Would I swap with you?
A day of stillness versus
a day of swirling fire.

But the fire is me
and the quiet is you
as you fall like a grebe
into quarry water.