A NEVER ENDING CYCLE OF REMINDING

You would have been forty four this year
Instead you are a permanent twenty six

Your bench has been revarnished by Parks staff
renewed, polished, positioned for the annual

You move through our dreams, a recurring returnee
or present yourself through a trigger of sound or sight

catch us offside or give a painful jab
as if to remind, orbiting in parallel, gone but not

The space here is crowded but never encroaches
that gape, your place, ever there, between the cracks

Peter Clarke