All That Way Poem by Terry Collett

All that way
and all that time,
and still we never
got to bring you home,
my son.

We left you where you lay
most of the day until the end
came quite suddenly
out of the blue
and we lost you.

Looking back I imagine
there was more
I could have done,
more I should have seen,
but the councillor said
it was just the mind playing tricks:
you can't have know what was wrong
and even the medical team
had no clue what it was or what to do
until it was too late,
and you were wrecked,
my son, through their neglect.

I wish we had talked more that day,
had discussed the whole
panorama of the day,
but we sat and talked
now and then as time
went past us as we sat,
and that sadly was that.

Time has flown.
The grief of losing you
retains its hold,
the memory of those long days
and the loss remain and hurt,
and darkness comes and plants
its seeds on which
my Black Dog feeds.

All that way and time
and you gone and me here
listening to the tides of time
flow by and those dark
grey clouds in the sky.