Yesterday Was My First Birthday After Poem by cahen thrips

The poet Julia Blackburn wrote:
'I am busy with death
And the fact of it
Because my husband died
Three months ago
Almost to the day,
The landscape of my altered world
Divided
Between before and after.'

I too am busy with death and
yesterday was my first birthday after;
in November I was seventy-five years before.
Such is the imbalance of my life:
so much before your December
death, so little since.
My unwelcome renaissance.
I have no starlings to comfort me;
I hear no tawny call and
the landscape of my world
is incurably fractured,
as were you.
They saw no beyond the horizon
for you and you were my horizon so
I see no further than today.
Forgive me for not celebrating
my birthday this year
nor ever again. January 2023