For Morag (Womad, July 2023)

I’m at a festival     alone

my friends having gone     elsewhere

I’m thinking of you

my dead friend

not a best friend     but

someone I liked

another poet

a good woman     a friend

The sound systems’ bass     in the distance

I love you so and so

fluttering across a field

of vans and tents

How you’d have wanted to be here

A dark butterfly     travels

from one side of the event shelter

to the other     A cliché

transferring a dead person

to an animal

but death loves a cliché

I hadn’t seen you for six weeks

maybe seven

I’d written    

placed a sprig of lavender

in the envelope     in the hope

you still had your sense of smell

It’s the last to leave

I almost recognised that butterfly

Morag     I’ll look for you today

in the festival crowds

I’ll wave at you

across the hands in the air

I’ll try not to run

after another thin woman

with long hair     kinked from plaits

I’ll know to acknowledge

your passing

and allow the music

to blunder on in

Katrina Naomi

Morag Smith died on 26 July 2023. She was a poet, her debut, Spoil, published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021.