MISSING

For Georg Mateos and based on his poem:

A Ghost Outside the Window 

Italicised words are his.

Rooks, rasping, rise suddenly,

like so much ash on the wind;

I meander further into/out of fog,

its leery spectre keeping distance.

The year has turned its corner

but are you ahead or behind?

Wrinkles, you say, have no memory

(being new), though tense young skin

never forgets the touch of tenderness.

I pick my way through ploughed furrows,

over corrugated remembrance of your

field standing fallow, its fruit still

clinging softly to warm vines.

There will be no ashes,

it will be left a ghost

and we cannot say

goodbye without getting lost.