After the funeral of my Aunt in Wales, I visited my last remaining relative of my father and mother's generation: the last of my uncles and aunts.  Who, importantly, is a person in her own right and not just a symbol of some sort.  But I do feel a gathering sense of loss as, perfectly naturally, but unforgivably these people who were part of my growing up and continuing life, cease to be.

     The words that end the first stanza, came out of the blue and gave me pause for thought.

     They stayed with me when I left my aunt and I have been thinking about them ever since.  The poem that I have written formed itself around those words, and I used odd sheets of paper that I found in the hotel where I was staying to write out some of my drafts.  Most of the work on the poem was done on my portable computer and I now feel that the work is ready to be posted.

     I am still unsettled by my aunt's sudden pronouncement and I have tried, in the poem to give a sense of what I felt and what I have been thinking about since.

My Last Aunt

Who else is there

who cares enough,

was close enough,

to match realities and say,

“You have your father’s hands”?

Five words that spring

pain-pleasured thoughts

– the double edge of memory –

whose cut’s self-healing,

because remembering’s

the only truth

that’s left. 

And knowing, too,

such observation’s limited

to just one fragile life:

the final representative of

those who’ve gone before.

She holds a telling knowledge.

From

            existences,

both mine and his,

she draws the parallels,

as sequences work out,

or not. 

Her collaged times

are fragments of the present-past:

the incongruities

that shape a life.

I do feel that this poem picks up on themes that have been concerning me recently connected to ageing, death and memory.