Yesterday I was eighty nine
And today, carrying my shopping home
Across the Recreation Ground
On a bright November day
In a pondering frame of mind,
I could be someone else, but was here.
The molecules and atoms that make me, me,
And lead me to think and feel as I do
Are worth more than a passing thought;
They are the great mystery of life
And whilst I can never know
How all this came to pass,
I am free to wander through or round the building blocks
That are my foundation as with everyone else.
Is there a thin membrane
Separating us from the knowledge?
Or a different time dimension,
A different space dimension,
A different energy physics
That made the thought as unlikely
As an ant out-staring the sun?
How do my atoms make me feel as I do?
Or feel at all? How do my molecules
Let me do calculations in my head?
I don’t know; but what I do know
Is that I do these things
And wonder about them as I do.
Soon I will not be able to say
‘Ursula died last year,’ as last year
Passing made me change from,
‘Ursula died this year.’
Calculating then feeling, feeling then calculating
They cannot be separated
Because one cannot exist without the other;
At least, not in the physical World we are in.
Form and content, cause and effect;
All thoughts I love, or am easy with.
How do I explain my feelings
For the great life bonding?
God knows, I have made so many attempts to do so,
All to produce puny and inadequate results.
Possibly one must be labelled as mad
Before one can achieve an ultimate in thought and feeling
And do I want to go so far without security of result?
Or could I even if I wanted to?
Of course not, you are pre-destined
And if that means something or nothing
Will be for you to decide.
The thoughts have accompanied me to my front door,
Once our home, now my home, empty but home.
She would recognise it as such.
Since the day she left that August, eternity bound,
It’s fifteen months now and her ashes are upstairs,
Will not be be moved until the year two thousand and fourteen
To where they will await mine,
Returned to atoms and molecules;
They won’t have a grieving heart,
Nor hope, nor love, nor anything we understand as life
But ashes to ashes, dust to dust
We can’t resist so comply we must.
November 2013