Connections

One August afternoon two children play a game
Of knuckle bones against a shady garden wall.
The older, Claudia, berates her little brother
For cheating all the time. ‘Now Max, you must play fair!’

Young Max’s eyes well up, his bottom lip sticks out.
Beneath his breath he calls his sister by a name.
A couple of millennia have passed since then,
And on another August afternoon I stare

At casts of two small bodies lying in a frame
Of stones. They hold each other tight and at their feet,
Some knuckle bones lie waiting to resume the game.
Nearby a teenage boy pulls closer to his mother.

Our instinct in the face of death’s always the same:
We cling to what we value most in life – each other.

© Helen Whittaker http://theduckside.com