Five Limericks on Grief
When I see a young boy and his dad,
I’m brought back to the one that I had.
They seem charged, holographic.
Then I lose them in traffic,
and it leaves me reflective and sad.
There was an old man with dementia
whose passing, I’m willing to venture,
was, they said, for the best,
and at last he could rest,
and they spoke unexpecting of censure.
There was an old man they embalmed
And he lay there so clean and becalmed.
The work loving, unrushed –
his eyebrows were brushed –
and I wasn’t emotionally armed.
Like a walnut resistant to shelling,
my feelings are screened, but it’s telling
that I ask am I grieving
or just self-deceiving,
that I’m silent and suddenly yelling.
There’s an image I chose for my profile:
I’m three, on his knee, looking docile.
Now a couple months on
I feel weird it’s not gone.
But I stare at the picture immobile.
Nick Ascroft