At a time like this
smoke drifts across the road
a few bars of harmonica
flit through the gusts of conversation.
You are no longer alive.
A very young waiter
serves me, proudly, a slice of pie.
This is a small celebration
of our rediscovered love
of your face looking up
gaunt and old from the pillow.
You always liked your pie.
How handsome you grew as the moment neared!
– the moment when something in you decided
it was time to give up on breath.
Old and yet young, vulnerable
haggard – debonair –
at last your face held all of you:
we couldn’t look away.
The conversations eddy in here;
the lemon aftertaste of the pie grows sour –
the flavour of mortality.
You made and marred me;
you muddled along, as we all do
and today, lying cold
waiting for the fire
still you lead the way.
Kai Jensen was born in Philadelphia but moved with his family to New Zealand when he was five. He married an Australian, is now an Australian citizen, and lives and writes at Wallaga Lake, on the Far South Coast of New South Wales,with kangaroos in the garden. Kai’s poetry has appeared sporadically in Australasian literary journals including Landfall, Sport, PoetryNZ, Takahe, Southerly, Westerly and Overland, and also in Rattle.
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