Her grief is like the shadow play
of bones snapped in an old X-ray
unsleeved to show what love had done
to her and her bright skeleton.
Lit up, half-cut, she starts to flag
still clutching her green shopping bag
of gin and ashes as she weaves
through deep, midge-haunted silences
exhausted to this break of trees
where, in its pop-up sepulchre,
the moon, as if consoling her,
unearths a white owl’s requiem
for her ripped dress, its unstitched hem
come loose, as she herself has come
bare-legged and torn to scatter him.
