Kettle: A Poem

For the Covid #DayOfReflection

Kettle

Fiona Robertson

It took a week for my father to die. 

After months of illness and treatments and choices, 

The end came fast enough to feel rushed 

Too slow to be called sudden. 

That week, the front door was never locked 

So the nurses could come and go 

And the pilgrimages could be made 

By friends and family coming to spend 

A last few fragments of time,

To tell him what burned in their throats

Or to sit in silence while he drifted,

Or to share old stories with a laugh 

Which catches in their chests. 

The litany of the dying read over days. 

In the kitchen, a mountain of mismatched mugs 

Collected over a lifetime 

Stacked up as each visitor shared a cup of tea 

Before the hand on the shoulder 

The almost imperceptible nod 

Or the tight hug and the searching of my eyes.

I was twelve and my job was to keep 

The kettle running, make the teas, 

Start the dishwasher before we ran out of mugs 

Which I hadn’t known we could do 

Before that week. 

After he died, I marked the passage of 

Official mourning 

By how many mugs stayed in the cupboard 

And I had to teach myself to take out only two 

The days of three now passed. 

That burned out kettle, 

The tower of mugs, 

Have been what I understand of loss. 

And this plague year, I’ve ached for the ones

Whose sorrows have not been marked with 

The litany of touch, of tenderness, of tea. 

Mugs still in their cupboards, 

And a silent kettle 

For their lonely grief.