PUBLISHED: March 2, 2020
On a narrow plinth in the corner
of the gallery, a stone portrait:
a man, his mouth unlipped
by fire, marble of the face
peeled off in the blaze. But the clothes
were spared somehow, as though
above the neck he was hung
on a noose of flame. And still
one unburnt eye, looking up
over the broken shoulder
to where his sculptor stood.
But hush. No one is coming.
We are handed our lives
by a fierce work. Onto which
blank space will I lock my gaze
when my father
is gone? How am I to wear
his love’s burning mantle?
