The Vanishing Point
                  i.m. Emily Riall

I.
The day you decided the darkness would win
and yoked yourself to a vanishing point
beyond the reach of our reckoning,
you answered the one binding question.
But, for now, as you begin to settle down
into what we remember of you and we
reconcile ourselves to asking questions
we never wished to ask, a scar of absence
arouses, there, inside us, the How&Why?
of how the future grew too big, too fast
for you; how you fought it with your smile
alone; why our mistakes are the keystones
in the triumphal arches of our lives,
above this road we call Recovery.

II.
The memory net hangs weighted down with stones
in a stream on a silent inland moor
diverted by your granite.

Inside the cottage on the hill
you hide in the rafters of moments
and catch me as I tumble down
the well-shaft of my spine:

you are a rope ladder swaying
below the naked linden tree;
the warmth in a vacant garden chair;
the trail that snail has left along the wall.

Where those lines of footprints vanish
beyond the mud beside the tinners’ leat,
a stink of she-fox lingers under bracken.