Does it matter
that we didn’t know you?
your name eroded,
now ghost letters left
above this graveyard plot,
not remarked by history,
not joined to great events.
But your missing presence in the past,
even just your might have been
walking on this grass,
would by your absence
leave in us tiny empty cracks,
something lost,
imperceptibly diminishing us,
your infinitesimal trace
removed from who we are
Time gives us pictures:
past heroes, nobles and devils,
those we love
and those we hate,
The famous standing out
on temporal painting’s canvas,
We are its fabric,
we, its warped and wefted threads,
a stretched taught plane of plainness
upon which epic daubings stand,
without you there and then
however unremarkable
our own story would be fractured
us, this canvas, torn.
Even while looking upon your place,
our standing present here
drips its instant droplets
of this now becoming then,
moments falling from our lives
absorbed to yours before
our dreaded destined end.
We splash our colours
in hope to leave
our memorable shapes and signs.
Until our story stops its flow,
we add our likely unknown tale,
our own brief and humble history,
to blend with yours forever,
becoming this and all the ground around
of all we’ve been together.