For ten years following the death of Honor Mary Scott Thwaites in 1993, Michael Thwaites wrote a poem for his wife’s birthday (21st September), as he had done so often during their 54 years of married life.
For ten years following the death of Honor Mary Scott Thwaites in 1993, Michael Thwaites wrote a poem for his wife’s birthday (21st September), as he had done so often during their 54 years of married life.
Ten years since that incalculable day
When from all worlds we know you slipped away
Knowing the time was short
Yours was the instant thought
‘Let’s go up to the Rocks!’
For ever is the promise. I will trust
To share with you the same light and same dust.
Six years since your last birthday in our midst
seems yesterday, in this same so-loved house,
Down arches of the years I hear your voice
explaining serials of our late departures,
Spring, at a bound. Once more the colourful chorus,
Daffodils first declare their lyric yellow,
My dearest love, where’er you are,
just through that door, beyond that star,
My dearest love, at seventy-nine
You’re not, and never have been, mine.