I could not get to the hospital when
you died; when taking a breath was too hard.
In the January cold your heart stopped and
returned to the world of water meadows.
Trout now hold it in the river shallows
like treasure, buried deep, where it will lie
enfolded by endless days of damsel-fly
drift and the soft silence of memory.
The loss in me knows that the heart of you
remains weed-wrapped in the swirl of water
where chalk streams cross the Hampshire fields.
Here a fisherman casts his line, standing
without movement in the River Test,
and sunlight catches a ghost in the mist.