WHEN I am gone,
Bury me not in dusty claims with my forebears,
In dry-rot graveyard, by tin-roof church and dunny.

Give me not to the sea, for wrasse-filled rockpool’s swallow.
Don’t leave my ashes high, escarpment winds to hollow.

Just fold me up,
Where weathered rock, by dry stone wall
Has made a deeper place,
Where hawthorn hedgerow
Has hidden me a ditch.
A place in green-grass valley,
That would be my wish.

My soul has a footprint
In Poets’ Land,
In rain-sluiced loam,
On flatbed stone,
Where shepherd, waller, and my tear-stained boy
Can call me home.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

.

You aren’t coming back.
The flowers are now soil.

Beautiful, beautiful compost we had, the month you died,
And similar layers of dying colour
Have filled all my days since.

The dogs will turn when I say your name.
Not with their ardent wish,
But with resignation;
And I still say your name,
With resignation,
To anyone who will listen.

Your trail is turning cold.
I hope you’ve found your footprint,
That I will get to follow,
And when I reach it, we will know.

That the last day of autumn, every year,
Is not the last of you.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.