For Tony Rees
5th August 1927 to 22nd December 2020
Like whispers
I think the weight
of them is undoing
the plait, the spaces
between each onion
getting bigger each day.
I should take it down
before one morning
I get up to see
onions scattered
across the yorkstone slabs.
But I know the dried necks
will be impossible
to tie again, they will
flake to nothing
between my fingers
and for as long as
they hang there
I can conjure my father
in his garden, his own
plaits of onions
in the dark hold
of the coalbunker
or the lean-to shed
their papery skins
loosening
and floating
to the floor
like whispers
like so many memories.
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