Absence

A moment defined by it entirely

Hi there. This poetry from my heart is coming thick and fast. Maybe an outpouring, maybe a flood, but something that needed to be let loose.

I have been reading the Way of the Fearless Writer by

Beth Kempton

and, similarly to her Winter Writing Sanctuary, it has cracked my heart open and poured it onto the page. In a good way, not the weird, grotesque way.

The prompt I wrote this from challenged me. Write about a situation, but only by writing all the details of the situation around it. Then write in the past tense and then the present tense. It was a great lesson, for me, and seeing how things evolved. I chose to write both tenses as both a poem and a short vignette.

My favourite, though, was the present-tense poem. So here you are. (I’ve put the others underneath, so you can see how things changed and progressed if you’re interested!)

P.S. I’ve written about the situation itself underneath the poem too.

---

The bells end
And echo
Echo
Amongst the stone.
We hold our breath
We still our feet
We pause
We halt. 
In the motionless air
In the empty trees
Birds sing sweet songs
Of hope and grief.
In this moment
Defined by absence
We stand together
With the ghosts of our
Absent friends. 
Remembering.

Then the guns pound
In our hearts.
The sun shines a promise
On gleaming wet faces. 
We breathe again.

Lest we forget.

My own photo, 11 November 2018.

Remembrance

The situation, of course, is the parade of Remembrance, held on Remembrance Sunday in London every year. It is, more specifically, the 2-minute silence, called at 11am.

I am not sure I’ll ever forget the first time I heard the silence fall. In central London, to stand anywhere outside a park and hear beautiful, crisp birdsong, felt like a miracle indeed. I will never be able to describe sufficiently what it feels like to stand among 10,000 other people and simply remember for 2 minutes, while the rest of the city goes about its life.

It’s too simple to say I stand for my Dad. There are many to stand for, to remember in that moment. It exists between things, it occupies it’s own space, but it is a moment that is defined entirely by absence. It is sad, beautiful, heart-rending and hopeful, all at the same time.

---

As promised, here are the other iterations of this poem, from this prompt. I loved seeing the subtle differences, how they progressed, how they changed.

Past tense poem

We stood together then
Lost in thought
With ghosts of
Absent friends.

As the bells ended
Echoing through the stone
The sweet songs of birds
Grieved with us. 

Under a grey sky
We had made no sound
No shuffled feet or talk
Barely a breath. 

At the end, the sun had come
Shining hope on gleaming clocks
And faces wet with tears
As the guns pounded in our hearts. 

---

Past tense vignette

We stood together by statues normally encircled by rushing cars. The bells faded down the stone walls and all grew still. There were no shuffled feet, no chatter. The only sound, sweet and surprising, was birdsong in the trees swaying overhand. Some heads were bowed, some eyes fixed on the grey clouds. Every one of us, remembering, seeing the ghosts of absent friends, the birds singing their lament of loss and hope.

At the end, the sun had come, and our faces, wet with tears, shone as the guns boomed and echoed across the city.

The moment defined entirely by absence had ended.

---

Present tense vignette

We are standing together and the bells echo amongst the stone, calling us to remember. Each of us retreats into our thoughts of absent friends. Above us, birdsong is heard, singing a sweet song of sadness and hope.

We hold our breath and grow still. Under grey clouds, we still our feet, we pause, suspended between this moment and that. We think and remember and grieve and honour. In stillness.

Then the guns pound. We feel them in our hearts a moment before they echo through the air across the city. The sun appears then, shining a promise on wet faces and proud statues.

We breathe again after the moment defined entirely by absence.

Lest we forget.