I came home from Iceland last week, full of excitement, overflowing with ideas that I wanted to commit to paper before they were lost in the business of daily routine. Then came the news that Bill is dead. We had known each other since childhood, a dear man who with his wife had done so much for so many, giving hospitality and kindliness to all who came within their orbit and suddenly she is a widow. As I sat at my desk feeling the bleakness of her loneliness I picked up the new anthology from Bloodaxe ‘In Person – 30 Poets’ and found myself looking at words by Jackie Kay -

‘And what I didn’t know or couldn’t say then
Was that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.’

Everything else must wait for another day.