(applicable)

TAKING LEAVE

When she was leaving
(taxi at the door, engine running)
he wrote, beyond speech,
(the familiar hand grown sketchy)
I didn’t know you were going so soon.

And people leave, it’s like that, always
sooner than they knew,
sooner than they thought, and things don’t wait,
and a whole lifetime
isn’t enough to discover the words.
Uncover, recover the words.

---M.R. Peacocke
---from: Speaking of the Dead. Peterloo Press, 2003