First sun, then snow . . . my father floats up the lane
in white jeans, a white rose in his claw.
He cuts a Lear-like figure, drifting alone
through the sun and snow.

‘Wherever your mother goes, I follow,’
he mutters, brushing the icing from her stone,
its doorstep to a colder house. It snows

and shines about our ornamental scene.
We can’t see for the petals of the rose.
He says she kissed his bald head in the lane,
first with sun, then snow.