J.G. McClure

On Visiting the Keats Memorial House

On Visiting the Keats Memorial House

I guess I expected golden-haired Autumn

to be there, clutching a tear-stained

shawl tight to her shoulders

and humming a breath-soft dirge. 

Or maybe a procession of funereal nightingales.

It seems the least they could have done

after all the nice things you wrote about them. 

But there wasn’t any of that.  There wasn’t

anything, really.  Just replica furniture

in a stuffy room, and your pockmarked plaster

death mask – still as an urn – staring blankly

through finger-smudged glass.