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The gravings

I tend the grave of my pets
far more than I have ever
spent at my daughters.
She is forever encased
somewhere, shallow
white wicker
of a place
I will never spray flowers
or leave an inscription
with a faded photograph,
those ones you see
of lives endlessly to be lived,
aged 13, 14 or maybe even 90
ad infinitum, except its not.

I contemplate planting
summer flowers,
and I tug persistent weeds,
I even talk to them
when hanging out the washing,
because that is where they would wait
for me, until the sound
of walks resounded in the air.

I spent more time with them
than my daughter,
she isn't buried in my garden,
she resides in some place
a place I won't go to,
although I have the number,
did you know, they give
graves numbers?

I am rediculously sentimental
when it comes to the pets,
my beautiful Irish setter,
my complexed cat
and a rabbit.
Each tear or tears I shed
are there, beneath the elm.

Sometimes you shed tears
in sterile surroundings,
sometimes, if you are lucky
they are shed, on that first hot spring
or late summer sun,
I suppose what I inarticulately say is
I cried for all of them
but I still tend my pets graves more,
pain is funny like that.

Poetry by Elle