How To Bury Someone Else’s Da
Make sure to pick the proper season.
July is saturated, so is November.
Spring is the perpetual king of felt-tip
leaks and drownings, too full already.
Remember how the whiteness of Winter is able
to cool heart muscle back to memories of clean sheets
on clotheslines that whisper with breezes fluent in Old Norse.
Bring bagpipes.
The granite skeleton of him is worth it.
Stop all cars at the border so the bird pieces
of his spine can reconnect with their wings.
Light a hundred lanterns for every bairn
in the village he always greeted with that
Here’s wun ah me dawturs!
Tell the fells they will have the bones
of him properly yem again, soon.
Prepare the tongues of paths with stories
murmured down close, in Gaelic.
Advise his youngest lad that fists are not the answer now.
Or gollering until crying makes a tarn of the loss.
Ask the afternoon to carry some
of the tonnage of mourning.
Bring the daffodils’ decision to wear their yellow louder
than the ghosts of artillery that still haunts the Falklands.
And as the reverberation from the pipes fade,
aim a kiss from the roof of an outhouse, and smile.
Marcia Hindson is a working class writer from the NE of England. Her work has appeared in Magma, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed With Pipework, Tears In The Fence, and others. She is currently working on her first collection.