It's Not Your Fault Poem by Les Derbyshire

It's not your fault
You were never there.
Each evening, stepping out
Of the big oval photo
Above the piano
In the best room,
You rode through the dark
To where that mystery, 'work'
Claimed the hours of your night.

And the table was never bare,
My toys and I had our home,
The milkman and the postman called
And the coals on the back-room fire never failed
To entrance with their fantasy-scenes.
My world was filled with aunts and doctors
And red buses and grocery shops,
With stories and hot-water-bottles
And your name.

And each morning
Before I woke
Your bike came home to the garden shed
And you to the 'don't disturb' room
At the front of the house.
Until, that is, the day when it didn't.
And how does a child grieve
For a big oval photo
And a name?