Poem: There can be beauty in death

It’s one week since my Dad died, and as I walk to clear my head, nature keeps trying to remind me that there can be beauty in death.

The fields where I walk are waterlogged from the flooding and one road is still too flooded to pass. Broken twigs float at speed along the fast moving water in the ditches.

I hear rustling in the undergrowth. The dog goes to investigate. 

A muntjac deer shoots past, momentarily tearing me from my thoughts.

© Angela Walker

I stop in a field of dead sunflowers. Something about the upright silhouettes of the spent flowers standing tall in the mist reminds me of soldiers in the trenches.  Come spring, these dead, black sunflowers will reemerge, colourful and full of life. My Dad won’t. Or will he? Is he in some better place? If I try hard enough can I sense him here? I cannot. I wonder why. Is he between places? Where should I go to feel his presence again? Bright green shoots scream of new life. Some early snowdrops push through the grass, tormenting me.  “Life goes on,” they whisper. How can that be when my anchor, my oak has gone? I feel as if I will float away. There can be beauty in death, but not yet, not for me.  The beauty is in the resurrection, not the dying.

I think about the symmetry of a father witnessing his daughter’s first breath, and many years later the daughter witnessing his last. The natural order of things does not make it easier to accept. 

© Angela Walker