Churchyard
Maybe this wind knows
something we don’t, daddy;
a secret it hugs close
and won’t share
as it blows across
the village churchyard
and the vicar firms the edge
of the freshly dug hole
with her wellington boot,
opens the labelled canister
and tips you in.
It’s the plastic Evian bottle
that throws me, with which
she rinses the caddy,
swirling round the water
to make sure she has every
last speck, every particle
of ash that once was you.
(previously unpublished)
Sue Hubbard is a novelist, freelance art-critic and award-winning poet. The Poetry Society’s only official Public Art Poet she was commissioned to create London’s largest public art poem at Waterloo. She has twice been a Hawthornden fellow and published three collections: Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon 1994), Ghost Station (Salt 2004) and The Forgetting and Remembering of Air (Salt 2013). Recently she was invited to record her poems for the National Poetry Sound Archive.
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