Because You Are Leaving

Because you are leaving, I paint a gift
Of sky for you. Love, in water colour.
A tarpaulin of equal-blue so clear
That should first dream fall on you
Tonight- there will be a vision of sun
In the corner of your mind, spilling light.

Though you cannot yet know light,
You must learn to separate darkness. Present
Now is cloud, eclipsing half the sun,
So when shadow meets explosion of colour,
It illuminates not the loss of you,
But the way you've touched the sky, as clear

As it is dark. Coastline develops, clear
Statues of rock split a shore where light
Unveils an outline that is you,
Older now. Conclusive proof of presence
In the portrait of life. The colours
Of water, first sleeving a foot, then sun

In its extravagant gleam, doing as sun
Does in its all-overing. You are clear
To me, and though I know how colour
Cavorts out of shape, I hold your light.
Imagine you swell, rise and take this gift
Of a world catching fire for you.

Out of reach. They announce the time. You
In a glass box, fading. Outside, Sun-
Set flickers, flashes a tail, its fleeting gift
Leaves us in an instant. The clear
Of night rolls in to cancel daylight
With moon holding sway over sky and colour

So I'm left to know you only in the colours
I paint: the last train leaving the coast, you
Lost in the beginnings of life, an ocean light-
Show erupting around us and the sun
Collapsing in a hundred thousand clear
Cut diamonds across water so finally the gift

To a departed son erupts in clear
Colour: white-gold on crystal-blue, a gift
Of sky holding you in its eulogy of light.