for Margaret Mullen
You Margaret who never put a foot wrong
and yet fell
and four years with your dancer's
fierceness
fought to stand upright, till you were
uprooted at last from this earth that loved you
and loves you still, that hovered
around you trying to hold and balance you
and could not hold you, you who with a
hawk's grace again
are dancing on the updrafts up and up
too far ever
to come back, come back. Be trees soaring lightward,
be treelight on water, be water
around rock, be rock soaked in
light. Be. You belong in the past
no more than in that wheelchair you
rode out in
as in a chariot against the brutal days
- but though some speak
only in the present as though there
were no death, it is a vice of style.
There is no trick
to bring you back, none
for the warmth of your grasp, your forehead
against my lips,
but still I chant: be courage, the light word for the dark
thing,
the strength of frail grace in a blue
dress in a garden
in the shadow of death, be the surging
uprightness of the soul, the lightness,
the jewel you were.
Patrick Daly