The Words You Left Behind I Meant To Say

[to Walter De La Mere or his reflection in the glass]

the words you left behind I meant to say
are curled like silver ferns around the
things that cannot stay

and they were then
before we were
the merest trace

of what already could
but be erased
and yet we long to hear

them echoed childlike, still
beyond the ghosts inhabiting
what fades.

and will they? wistfully
a garden make

a voice beside me asks and is it you
I say or someone else implores
return thou to the task

I cannot see and yet, adore

mary angela douglas 12 february 2016