Lavoisier’s Law
For Mark

Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready. I place
it on your shelf amongst the things you’ve left there.
A Tommy Cooper Fez. A brass bell. A cup painted
with a bold M. A black clay sculpture from
your year 8 art class. Your stethoscope. Your
rugby head guard. A pair of pink sunglasses.
A thick pile of hardbacked Harry Potter books;
the whole set. A packet of condoms.
The shiny unopened packet makes me want to cry.

Blackbird

On the apple tree’s gnarled branches a song is beginning.

Flute-like music carried
to where I sit,
on my son’s bench.
My arm across the back.

He is there with me. Both of us listening.

Seconds pass.
Heart breaking bars
begin again.
Then pause.

Woman and bird wait. No answer comes .

Legacy

You asked for a bench
as many people do.
Only with your quirky humour
you wanted yours in a beauty spot
facing the wrong way.

Or failing that, somewhere ordinary, you said.

Today we are here
in the place
that came along by chance,
polishing your plaque,
clearing debris from the bench,
including a stray beer can.
That would make you smile.

Behind a children’s nursery
the land grows quietly beautiful,
silver birch lifting the light.
I hope you would approve.

I think about your final months
raising funds, awakening minds.
And before that
the things you did so discreetly
we only learnt about later:

the revision notes lent without fuss,
the students defended when fines were unjust,
the way you were the one
who put a young student at ease
their first time in theatre.

In your final job
a patient said
that you were
the most smiley doctor
she had ever met.

And then that pure act at the end —
allowing scientists to use your body after death.
The final card
in your fight against cancer.

Today, just ahead of Christmas,
we are here for you.
This oak bench.
And beside it another
for war heroes.
You — a hero of a different kind.

On my phone
we play the songs you loved.

I think about
how kind you were.

Susan Jane Sims most recent collection is Splitting Sunlight (Dempsey & Windle, 2019). She publishes poetry through her Dorset based publishing company Poetry Space . She has been a poet in schools for Threshold Prize and a judge for the Poetry by Heart competition. She was a Hawthornden fellow in 2018.