Cars and birds

Cars and birds
outside on the lawn
While you work
at your table next door
Dying slowly

We exchanged pleasantries
at the letterbox
you brought from America
An all three of us
ignored the closeness
of your death
Your sagging eyelids
and drooping posture

I hear you coughing
in the early morning
Hacking up your past
Choking on your whole life
And we say hello
Talking of the heat and the cold
and the dying grass
and the thrashed Geraniums
As if they were the
only things that mattered

Life is so small
That cars and birds on the lawn
Are all we seem to have