Jigsaw Puzzle by Andrew Shephard

Jigsaw Puzzle

Your world is cut in a hundred pieces

panorama shattered, jumbled shapes

with no guide to reassembly.

‘I can never be happy again,’ you say,

binning paper plates of platitudes.

‘You are changed forever,’ I say,

but quietly add

(not expecting you to hear)

‘there can be a day, some years away,

when you will see a path to cross

from dark to light,

if you permit the passage to occur.’

You are right to deny it.

Everything you feel is right.

Rightly angry, you ask me straight.

I pause.

‘Yes…

That surprising moment came to me

like a seagull in flight

or a rolling headland against blue sea

as I watched gentle junior fingers

triumphantly position

the final wonky piece of sky

into a bright new landscape.’