what do you want to say, Shirley*

It's so quiet here and
  although a force of light and love has left the world
 I can't hear any laughter

the loved one died
 and everything she touched is distant
 Shirley kept her in a plastic bag which we planted

under a tree when our dog also died.
 Strange that all I can hear
 is laughter. Shirley kept her

in the campervan until her return to Riverhead
and  although Lotte was blind
she led the way, for our dog, Ariel,

 they ran away together. Again,
they would return in the summer,
  and again, Lotte would lead the way for Milly

our daughter to the top bunk in the campervan
where Shirley and she would read books. In the
summer, Zachary, our son remembered her

and Lotte. Perhaps you say
  as if it adds to your collection, this is just the way
  you process grief but I can't make

the requisite connection. So quiet here
Once   once upon a time Shirley was an actress
and Dad who she called Tony Taylor visited her in hospital

noting the difference in their ages, the nurse asked
What are you doing here?
We're running away together, said Dad. And,

an orphan, she did, in the Southern Players.
  once upon a time there was theatre here
  only the second theatre company ever in New Zealand

He was, she said, so naughty,   then, so was she
  from a girl, who   although she never had a bad word
for anybody, it didn't mean she didn't say it,   and

I never saw a cloud darken it, had a lucky face. Mum, whose
connection with her was difficult and professional, directed
her in A Place on Earth and I remember Ted her husband

from this period. He was proud, a proud man, and
  after he died she became a gypsy,
with adopted families,  staging-posts, along her journey

She shrank, returning every summer with still such startling
hair, shorter, still strong, gin on the verandah,
until her doctor told her to go south, and she sold her campervan,

for her ashthma, but for all the shrinking of the world
  into a breeze-block frame, as uncomfortable to say
as it was to see her in, she had no bitterness in Port,

was she reading when it caught fire? no bad word
(except about a close and mutual friend, He knows
  nothing about theatre. Theatres in fact were closing

(everywhere). And she came to a chair. And a small bed.
  and mainly very kind people around her, perhaps
with more and more connection,   who can say?   to them

and to the past, as, when we get older we are said to have,
  the requisite connection, then   so it is,
  but also a statement of my grief, selfish

to feel, a thread break, that I can't make connect, to a world
  of run-aways, of naughtiness without malice, Shirley knew,
  Shirley-Whirly knew,   and if I or if anybody should

ask, were you with her, were you with her, in the end,
  and what did she, or what do I, believe, in the end
  I would say   I'm with her,

to try and add a little of my own
  to that force of light and love
  she was

...

*What fun!

for Shirley Kelly
19 March 1931–2 November 2025

[note that the spelling of Lotte is ... a bit of an in-joke*]

(9 November 2025, Riyadh)