Life After Death

By Rosemary Nissen-Wade

For Daevid 

I've been reading a vampire book.

I like to pretend

the dead can stay in this world

in their physical forms.

Even if they only emerge at night,

isn't that when we most want them,

in those long, lonely hours?

But I know it's not like that.

Life after death

is a song you wrote,

a piece of music recorded.

Or it's a poem.

Life after death

is the life you lived,

the moments that stay

in other memories. Ours.

It's your voice we hear

so clearly, we look around

and see no-one — yet still

it lingers in the air.

It's your shape in a crowd,

your gesture

made by a stranger,

the set of your head.

And sometimes

it's a dream

so real that we wake

as from a conversation.

It's a message

entering the mind

in your very words,

your intonation.

It's this tree, that star,

the endless ocean,

the wind across the mountain,

the earth we dig.

And it's the surge of love

that shakes us all over,

warms us, enfold us,

brings us to tears … grateful tears.