A Poem by Adrian Masters

A book of days

There being no other means,
your mother marked your birth
in a little book of days.

There being no alternative,
we enter others’ lives mid-conversation,
remaining ever after slightly misinformed.

There being no other traces,
I seek cinders of your conversation
in this widow’s book of days,

like the little flower pressed in the pages of March,
your brothers’ names, a distant ‘Mr.’
and her own name changed to your father’s.

There being no other recourse,
I rake this widow’s book of days
for cinders or signs at least from the flower.

But after a century, flowers and days have little to say.
Close the little book, brush away the ash,
there being no other discourse.

Adrian Masters is a journalist and broadcaster, living in Wales.