Leaving Somers Beach

My face has fallen into furrows.

Now, where have I seen that face before?

Yes, my mother, who waved from the shallows

while I walked backwards, away from the shore.

I was trying to hide a rush of tears,

tears that took me by surprise

and seemed like odd illogical fears.

Alarm hadn’t spoilt our other goodbyes.

Forlorn but fit, with no aches and pains,

she’d said most things she wanted to say

so why feel I’d never see her again?

I pushed my niggling worries away.

The day was bright, dispelling doubts,

children paddled, a ball was in play,

the beach was alive with laughter and shouts.

My family waited: I couldn’t stay.

There came the day not six months later

when a shrilling phone made me catch my breath.

I lifted my hands from soapy water

and heard the words explaining her death:

from needing me, from loneliness

from not having someone who could assuage

unbearable bleak hopelessness

which no one expected, at her age.

That E.S.P., my faint sixth sense

but premonitions are easy to miss;

and all I can find in self-defence

is, I was young and the young are heedless.