JUST A LITTLE TIME
When you are old, time gets out of hand.
Like water in a muddy dam, its sluice gates open
to spew out effluent cascades. Your feeble fingers
can’t stem the flow. Brown clouds of days
rush past. You clutch at them,
but as you try to keep them back
they twist and swirl away,
turn into weeks and then to years.
Until all that is left is
a shrunken puddle
on a sandy floor.
THE SCENT OF ROSEMARY
The bitter scent of rosemary
calls to me from the bush
that once grew by the door.
of a house full of girl-children, set
in a garden with a daisy-bordered lawn
and a cypress tree. .
Round-faced Dalena
kept floors polished
and windows clean. Old Soppy tended
flowerbeds and sold my green beans on the sly.
Now −
both in their graves, the lawn paved over
and the cypress tree chopped down.
CAROL SINGING IN AN OLD AGE COMPLEX
As the moon, one day from full, stares pale
through clumps of cirrus cloud,
we bring our candles and our hymn sheets,
and gather at the gate to start
our pilgrimage around the cottages.
A singer in a motor-wheelchair leads the way
and bringing up the rear, another singer
leans on a walker.
Our choirmaster gives the note
and off we go. We stumble into “Bethlehem.”
Our voices tremble on the damp night air
then swell. Sound spreads, doors open,
hands wave out of windows.
Soft drizzle sparkles in our hair.
We visit all the units
one by one.
Legs weary, breath a little short,
song starts to peter out, and then a woman,
surprised at hearing music by her door
comes out and looks confusedly about.
Through fog that fills her aging brain, recalls
something she first learnt at her mother’s knee and
joyfully, joins in with sweet soprano Stille
nacht,
Silent Night,
Holy night
LEARNING ABOUT
ORION
(After studying an online astronomy course)
In the constellation of Orion
somewhere halfway between
Red giant Betelgeuse
and White giant Rigel, lies
Orion Nebula, a fuzzy place,
where stars are born.
As Orion sweeps across the sky,
his hunting dogs beside him,
chasing the Pleiades, bow at the ready,
he carries below his belt the seeds
of suns. They swirl in multi-coloured clouds
of purple, yellow, green and blue.
In the wide disc which gathers round
a sphere that will become a new young sun,
are bits of debris, which, with dust
and ashes from celestial conflagrations
might form, after a million years
another Earth like ours
THE
FUNERAL
I get there early to secure a
seat.
The coffin is already there and
the churchwarden
The coffin wears an outsized
wreath
The warden, wears a white shirt
and a tie
I kneel and say a prayer
A lay minister in a robe walks
down the aisle
Women from the old age home take
up their seats.
some people come in at the vestry
door
I read the Service Order leaflet.
The lay minster blows in the mic
He shakes it to and fro and blows
again.
Some people come to sit in the
front pews
I read the book of Job in the Pew
Bible
A child toddles up and down the
aisle
The wind blows the altar candles
out
The verger lights them all again.
I finish Job and start on
Proverbs
The priest comes in and puts
notes on the lectern
He looks around and then walks out again.
The warden makes announcements I
can’t hear
I finish Proverbs and begin The Psalms
The last of the pallbearers has
arrived
They hoist the coffin skew; its
wreath falls off
The verger picks it up and puts
it back
The organ breaks into the March
from Saul.
And now the service can begin.
WORDS FAIL ME.
Numbers were always unreliable.
ID, cell phone, credit card, the only ones
that ever stayed embedded in my brain
and as for names − many have long refused
to be attached to faces,
but now words, once dependable,
my very tools-of-trade,
are turning traitor.
It was the long ones started the rebellion,
the crossword puzzle ones – palaeontology,
Manichaeism, spectroscopy, all
went AWOL when I needed them.
Soon everyday ones joined the fun,
hiding under beds and behind cupboards,
having to be winkled out with
rakes and broom-handles.
Some, I believe, have gone for good.
They went and hid in luggage trunks
or old ice-chests and to make sure
I wouldn’t find them there,
they closed the lids down very tight.
And then they couldn’t open them and so
they suffocated –
serve them right!
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