“Gerald” –
people still spoke his name,
sometimes,
occasionally,
infrequently,
but
always in the softest possible way
handled the sentence in which it appeared
as if mohair, or silk.
He was gone before I started.
Gone from the workplace,
the town,
the world
one day as afternoon turned to evening
coming back from extension classes
for his diploma
motorbike + truck + inattention = death.
I was the inheritor –
after the inheritor.
His name was still on the staff board
my predecessor’s removed before I commenced –
mine, sometime between Monday and Friday, of my last week
but Gerald’s remained.
Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry 