Last Walk

A fence, a graveyard, keeping women out,

Mourners walk out, all men, blank-faced, calm

Before our own last walks.

And soon, your last walk, on the shoulders 

Of your uniformed brothers that black box

That used to be you.

They told the family that the fuselage 

Of your fighter, somewhere deep in a desert found

Your last moments and yet

Untold the details of what those were.

Your mother asks why, and how, and begs

For a last glimpse of her son

Now enfolded in that impenetrable dark

Mystery that your brothers carry.

And I can only see their backs moving

In a slow, graceful walk, away from us,

Airmen, all, stoic-faced, grieving only

In their eyes as they walk past me

With fleeting shadows as their eyes meet mine

And I know that our hearts feel the same

On your last journey home.

And repeatedly I talk to you, apologise,

For knowing too well, for not knowing enough,

For hasty words sent on an impulse

That now can no longer be retrieved.

But when I try to remember your energy,

All I can see in my mind’s fitful eye

Is your last walk in a box and the shoulders

Of your brothers. And I struggle to breathe knowing

That finality of the final moment

And a lifetime of regret.