A Seasonal Sense of Loss

April may have been the cruelest month to Eliot
but February is mine; the calendar,
it snakes left to right, down and down
like some intestinally-shaped hourglass
before finally stopping here
on the nineteenth.

And here I stand, still squinting
under the pall of grief, but
the sun must be endured -
it hurts my eyes
and dries the grass by his grave, no doubt.

“Summer surprised us”
and that it did.
Not in the way we would’ve wanted, either.
Then again, it’s the way death operates
I’ve discovered.

Died 19/2/09