Part XV and Marie Lightman - Unseen

(Part XV is the introduction of another major player who certainly knows a awful lot than he lets on, Inspector Brooks)

(Our latest guest poet is the wonderful Marie Lightman, a amazing poet from the North East England and besides married to Ira Lightman who needs no introduction, also currently is running https://marielightmanpromptresponse.wordpress.com/ where she is currently deliver a prompt a day for a year)

Part XV

Brooks knew something was wrong

About the massacre

At the train station

Before he even arrived,

Monumenting the sunlight

As in a tombstone

Suddenly slammed shut

When he stepped out of his car

Portraiting the chaos in his mind

Only hours before

With a subway wrapper

Dangling out of his pocket

And his inspector’s badge

Almost dragging itself back to his car

When he left to examine the body

As in a panic stricken protest

Summasing the evidence

In a few seconds

Of half ripped ears and fingers

Stitched into jigsaws

Glimmering half in and out

Of the shadows round the back

Of the coach station

And before the start of the village

Hauling tragedy all the way

Towards the canal

Washed in a deep velveteen

Of sorry filled faces

Floating across his eyesight

Full well knowing

Who this was

And there was precious

Precious

Little he could

About it.

***

Unseen

Ivy, crispy with ice

covers everything,

I step off the path into

the empty manor's garden.

Marble grave stones, overgrown.

I shiver. Who buries their dead

so close to where they sleep?

I crouch to read lichen

smothered words. Finger

spell single letters, trace

John and year of death, 1825.

Glance up and see you through cold breath,

you wear a cloth hat, beaten jacket and

face grey, tinged with ash, like a snow sky.

You bend, as if to weed, then stop frame.

I scream, in my head. “Look up! There

is a child who isn't meant to be here.” Look

at me, I breathe, you fail too.

Eventually, but through unseeing eyes you do.

This is too much for me and I run.

@ Marie Lightman