Old poetry

...very old poems. do forgive...

Not taken

You didn't mind science.
Preferred music and film,
books and art,
but had a certain appreciation for the
stricter disciplines. Especially
chemistry
and the botanical arts. We never spoke about
physics that I remember.

In the quantum theory of the multiverse
there must be worlds
where the ice was never pushed back.
Where the dinosaurs won.
Where the wheel
was never invented and there was
no car for you to climb into that morning
and you never died.

There must be worlds
where you never existed,
and no group ever gathered
there in our living room,
to drink whisky in shocked silence
and look up with tired, blank eyes
as someone says, almost pleadingly,
"No, really. It is a joke, right?"

A man dies
on the way to his grandmother's funeral.
Just the sort of dark jest
you would probably have enjoyed.
And maybe,
somewhere,
there is a world
where you're laughing.