Ray Miller

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A Clockwise Direction

I found that wedding photo we lost
behind a doll in our daughter's room.
Russian, as it happens, the doll that is -
I can read some significance in that:
so full of themselves, they miss the bleeding
obvious. I wiped off all the dust and stuff,
made you twenty-one again and placed

us on the bookshelf where O meets P;
I'd have liked it before your favourite author
but her shelf's too close to the ground.
All my books are in alphabetical order;
I wake at 7 to clean and tidy
progressing in a clockwise direction,
starting at the front door and ending in the bath.

I compare it to my parents' wedding picture
that's hanging next to the dining room door:
they had a bigger cake, more friends and relations,
dressed black and white, a formal occasion;
contemplative, no eye for the camera.
My mother's fuller in the face than I remember
and isn't that an ashtray beside the cake?

I blow these pictures up out of proportion
trying to spot a germ of the future:
leukaemia, cancer and emphysema
buried within a poor Baboushka.
How happy we appear! My Mum said never
had I looked so handsome, like Richard Gere;
perhaps that's the joke I'm laughing at.

Behind us I trace the faintest whisper
of the tower blocks blown in ‘88.
As we're cutting the cake, your face
burns with embarrassment
or anticipation of the sauce to come.
I can feel the grip that you have on my arm,
as if I might be the first to depart.

When lights fade I think I can hear you breathing,
but it's central heating or a noise in the loft.
I close the windows to keep your scent in
and reach out to touch an amputation -
I said we shouldn't buy a bed this wide.
You never see pictures taken at funerals
unless somebody important has died.

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