E C - In Memoriam

As up tarmac drive, courtege slowly
crawled its way, halfway up wooded
hill to Park Wood crematorium, noticed
through window of death-black limousine,
on border of remembrance garden, simplest
of memorials for someone young whose
name I recognised; from whose ashes urn
upright stood a single rose, with a card
that said fifty years previously she’d died.

Knew her name. Knew her friends.
Lived up Boothtown; Range Bank top.
Went to Princess Mary High School for girls.
Polite girl. Quiet girl. With a kind word
for anyone, she always wore a smile.

Used to call at her house, Saturday mornings,
delivering pop for New Delight Table Water
Company. Sometimes she’d come to the door
to pay for her family’s purchases - lemonade,
cherryade, orangeade, dandelion and burdock, 

She’d died in nineteen seventy one;
same age, twenty-one, as I was then.
Her parents never ordered pop again.
 

@ rowland paul hill   3 August 2019

(attending my brother funeral, 1st November 2017)