No More

From my poetry blog, written fourteen years ago on the death of my father.

Coronets For Ghosts

This poem appeared in my book, Heading North. Though it 
doesn't explicitly say so, I wrote it on the 
death of my father, fourteen 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

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