Epitaph For Uncle Joe Poem by Rory Hudson

A cold rain was falling
through the casuarina trees
when we took you all,
old man with the snowy hair,
to the plot beside the river,
where the earth was made ready.

And a preacher spoke
above the sorrow of the mourners
of your hopes and struggles,
of your joys and sorrows,
of your sons and daughters,
who silently stood listening,
who gazed at the grey earth.

But I was lost
among the casuarinas
where the white cockatoos fly
with no joy and no sorrow
as you too walked in wonder
among forest and fern, feet pressed against the earth,
to rise and fall again and again in the echo of the light,
now soft, now bright, in the call of the dappled afternoon.

But now, engraved in marble, hard and firm,
you rise before me, arms outstretched, suffused in the deep
incomparable blue of my dreams, my pain that knows no rest.

Aunt Eva stood weeping
by the body of her husband
which was lowered in a coffin
in the grave beside the river.

She called you in Brisbane
when you were an empty soul,
vagabond, watching the white lily
drifting across the pond, breaking in its path
all shapes and colours in the water that you knew so well.

But later she knew the one
who motionless as the lily drifted in a clear sky,
wind filling his pores, drenching like the salt sea;
who knew in his heart the heart of the piping shrike
in its call across wasteland and moor on winter’s eve;
and the cry of the tortoise from within its bony shell
in its wanderings beginningless among the reeds and marshes.

And I too walked with you
those same trackless paths
by the river that flows and does not flow,
under the dying trees that never die. Silence, you said,
and we shall hear their shadows breaking on the shore.

And shall we meet again?
old man with the snowy hair,
on some distant shore
as the preacher said,
his voice rasping through the rain,
struggling to be heard
above the sorrow of the mourners.

How shall I know you then?
if there are no
lines on your old face,
stubble on the chin,
nails broken at the end of calloused hands;
or if we are not walking again
through the valleys where the eagle hunts,
the sun hot on our skins, dust,
kicked up beneath our feet, swarming, and the flies
drinking our sweat on summer afternoons. And I will bring you
cheese and black olives, and other food
that I have cut for us to share.

Or is it that you part from us now,
life given out, loving the darkness
and the silence at the end of the world -
of the preacher, whose voice
cracked and was still -
of the mourners, who choked
on their sorrow and were still-

the earth falling heavily
onto the coffin

the wind howling voiceless
through the casuarinas

and a cold rain falling
in the last exchange.