Perfect Light

There you are, in all your innocence,

Sitting among your daffodils, as in a picture

Posed as for the title: ‘Innocence’.

Perfect light in your face lights it up

Like a daffodil. Like any one of those daffodils

it was to be your only April on earth

Among your daffodils. In your arms,

Like a teddy bear, your new son,

Only a few weeks into his innocence.

Mother and infant, as in the Holy portrait.

And beside you, laughing up at you,

Your daughter, barely two. Like a Daffodil

Your turn your face down to her, saying something.

Your words were lost in the camera.

                                                   And the knowledge

Inside the hill on which you are sitting,

A moated fort hill, bigger than your house,

Failed to reach the picture. While your next moment,

Coming towards you like an infantryman

Returning slowly out of no-man’s-land,

Bowed under something, never reached you –

Simply melted into the perfect light.