Poem: Family reunion

Family reunion

The cemetery

vast

an hour searching in blazing heat

my wife

contemplative

watching me from tree shade

among

weathered

largely indecipherable

headstones

so many times

a child accompanying parents

with garden flowers

to my brother’s

grave a resting place

the three

now share

defeated at length

consoled

by the thought

they would have felt

in their bones

that I was near.

Ron Wilkins is an earth scientist living in a wooded area of outer Sydney. Working visits have taken him to France and China, and a hobby that he enjoys is the identification of the more than 900 species of Eucalyptus in Australia. His poetry has seen publication in Australia, France, China, the US and UK, in literary magazines, and the book collections “Fistful of Dust” and “Séjours en France et autres pays”(“Sojourns in France and other countries”). A member of Sydney’s Pennant Hills Poetry Group, more about Ron, his life, work and poetry can be found here.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.