Death lay silent within the wicker basket

so carefully woven into a casket.

Six foot long and as wide as a life,

it cradles the memories of a girl, mother and wife.

She nestles in the silk like meadow picked flowers.

Scented like daisies, she whiles away hours

waiting for the moment that her soul lets go

of a body enchained to a world far below.

She remembers warm lanes with her sister and brother,

mimicking the lambs who bleat for their mother.

Pedalling so fast, the wind in her hair.

Free as a dove, as light as the air.

She plucks at a vision of Summers by the sea.

Before there were husbands, pushchairs and pee.

The days before bruises on thighs, backs and heads,

eons before sunset when she was finally dead.

And in this last journey entombed in her skin,

she’s concocting a gift to bring comfort to him.

She’ll fill all  his nightmares, wait for the scream,

and haunt every hour of morning’s daydream.

© Jacqui Thatcher 2014

It doesn’t take much sometimes to inspire a poem.  And this poem was one of those that was inspired as I passed a hearse on the road to the Crematorium.  I was surprised by the wicker coffin as I had not seen an ‘eco’ coffin before and I was delighted.  It seems so wholesome, somehow, so ‘mother earth’.  Who had died, I wondered?  How had they died?  What kind of person would have a wicker coffin?  Was it all as ‘Greenpeace’ as it seemed.  And so the story began…..