The pipes in minor key. . .

    by Murray Alfredson

The pipes in minor key, they haunt the air

and resonate within the lungs and heart.

Tears overflow down cheeks as hand by hand

on tapes the shoe-box coffin’s lowered in

that little grave.  The sun still shines, though wind

is bleak to match the mood.  And thus it is

we let fall our clods of loam, an earth

to earth committal, and hug in sorrow shared.

An hour before it was, with shock it dawned:

that tiny china doll, that figure dressed

in bridal white (or was it christening?)

had been a human child, thrust forth too soon

from womb to light and air, from warm to cold.

Two hours she’d lingered on her mother’s chest.

In love begotten, born and died, interred

to lie within the bosom of the Mother.

© 2007 Murray Alfredson

* Previously published in ‘Nectar and light’.

Murray Alfredson has worked as a librarian, a lecturer, and in Buddhist chaplaincy. He is a prize-winning poet, has published essays and poems in Australia, the UK and the USA, and a collection: ‘Nectar and light’ in Friendly Street New Poets, 12; Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets and Wakefield Press, 2007.