No More. On The Death Of My Father.

This poem appeared in my book, Heading North. Although in it I don’t explicitly say so, ‘No More’ was written after the death of my father, which was thirteen years ago today.

No More

No more. No more bleaching white
the nicotine stained flesh
of your fingers,
picking at the sterile 
veneer of cordiality 
amidst the well-thumbed
scattered deserts
from which ruins strive to rise.

No more counting down the markers,
elbows jostling territorially,
courting, sequential swans
rising in toasts, triumphant.
Your slow, inexorable withdrawal 
left behind a vacuum,
the equilibrium of a table
out of kilter.

No longer the trumpeted parading 
of the heir apparent,
the tedious repetition 
of vine and tongue,
reproduced seasoned lines 
framing the true inheritance 
and held to likeness.
Casual comparity no more. No more.



©Andrew James Murray