4. Funeral: August, 2008

August, hateful month;
month of both my 
marriages;
unconsummated holidays;
trips aborted; 
honeymoons short shrift;
fractious children, out of school,
adrift. 

August, trivial month;
month of tourists, camera-lens for
eyes; boarding buses,
buying bling and trash;
capturing London's cruel 
and complex history in one 
unseeing flash; 
cruising down to Greenwich with their 
cheery Cockney guide, who fails to 
mention mud and corpses
beneath the treacherous
tide.

August, idle month;
bored with cricket, bilious from
ice-cream;
futile fêtes and funfairs running out of
steam;
bargain-breaks a swindle:
seaside stormy, colours monochrome;
away-days lost in sidings, then landing up
back home.

August, violent month;
month of combine-harvesters
guillotining small bodies in the
corn;
meadows scythed, and stubbled fields
forlorn;
shrill-tongued swifts departing; 
dropping, dying, as they fly too far, 
too fast;
mushroom-clouds still smoking from
an older, crueller past.

August, turgid month;
month of heat-waves, thirsty plants, 
tired trees; the green glaze of 
June leaching from the lawn;
the glitter of July
rusting into autumn's barren 
brown; 
the long, light evenings
contracting to the downturn,
as colour fades and summer frays to winter; 
the relentless cycle of light and
darkness, hope and 
heartbreak, 
birth and 
death.

And her death, dirging August; 
the same black-bordered canker
corroding every year.
The crass sun at her funeral an uninvited 
guest,
haloing her glossy, too-new coffin
in its hard, harsh, heartless
glare;
the spiteful stare of sunflowers
reproaching her once-brilliance,
now destroyed; 
her own light snuffed out; her buoyant beauty 
void.

And, later, at the lunch,
guests quaffing wine and
strolling on the beach 
beyond the house;
the frisking waves more suited to a 
wedding than a wake, 
as friends carouse and brash kids
guzzle cake; sand scattered by their bare and
boisterous feet,
while she stiffens in the chill of August
heat.

Remorseless month, 
I hack you from the calendar; 
genial July now morphs to kind
September, and you are dust,
defunct, 
extinct, 
expunged;
your gaudy garb grey ashes in 
an urn.
You wrecked her in her prime of 
summertime,
so, murderous month,
I slay you in your turn.