Poetry

Two Weeks On

Geoff Page

Each time, it was the “last goodbye” ...
that slight wave as we drove away,
the talk all “done with” now,

your sense of something to get back to.
And now, at 92, it’s happened.
The smile I souvenired on leaving

just two neat weeks ago 
still plays the optic nerve:
you there in your dressing gown,

seated by the ward’s high bed
and on your “best behaviour”;
your head just tilted slightly, weighted

with some small acceptance.
Your dressing gown was pink, I think,
against the cooling air.

Earlier you’d scuttled out
across the corridor
behind your sprightly frame-with-wheels,

seeming not so sick at all.
The nurses had to slow you down—
and two weeks later now you’re gone,

ashes ready to be spread
out home beside the creek.
Two weeks south, I find the phone

much quieter than I’d like.
The last of all those “last goodbyes”
is one small tilting of the head

and one small secret smile.

Geoff Page