Remember me before
My mind skipped a beat,
My hands shook like leaves
Blown about in the street.
Remember me before
I forgot your name.
The love was still there,
Just tangled in my brain.
Remember me before
My world became a room;
The only home I could find
Was in the faces I knew.
Remember me before
I cried out for Jane;
Searched your eyes for the lies
Whilst a smile masked your pain.
No, remember me,
If you can,
With Bob Ross on the telly
And a paintbrush in my hand.
Remember me as the legacy,
A great grandfather who could see
Three beautiful generations
Unfolding right before me.
Remember me as
Windy trips to the sea.
Bacon strips on crab hooks;
Jellies rubbing at our feet.
Remember me as the smile
Behind those thick frames
Laughing at the same jokes
Again and again and again.
Remember me not
In those last few days,
Those outstretched hours,
That tear-sodden haze.
I am here, I am here
And I will always… always care.
Please remember me not
as the man who wasn’t there.
No one told the shimmering flight of damselflies
Summer is almost gone
No one told the honeysuckle-drunken bumblebees
Winter is coming
No one told the last late clutch of hungry sparrow chicks
The frost is almost here
No one need tell us
This may be our last full summer
Your body, strong and steady as the birch tree
While your mind
Drops memories like falling leaves
And coming winter storms
Will one day strip you bare
Still, we sit outdoors
Late in life, in late September
Clinging a moment longer
Under the first soft lit evening star
Meanwhile the passing day lives on elsewhere
While rooks are peaceful, treetop bound
And crows settle down on the steeple.
He’s as Welsh as Black Mountains, red dragons,
the white of a leek, but he’s turfed sheep
from his fields to reap a different harvest,
with hillside land filled with so much more
than hosts of golden flowers – not just to see
them dancing in a breeze but to fight disease
that mind-steals, eats memories. More
than ten thousand stand in rows, bulbs buried,
trumpeting leaves stuffed with Galantamine.
His gentle aid may mean she can again recall
those small October days knelt digging holes
with me, burying hope and jonquils.
(content warning: suicidal feelings}
His garden is overgrown. It has gone to seed.
A black-stemmed bamboo is stealing all the light.
My father comes downstairs for the tenth time today.
We sit and wait, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’
His sundial is buried beneath a shrub… He’s forgotten its name.
His bird table lies toppled on the lawn.
My father appears on the patio. We persuade him to stay,
drinking tea in his pyjamas, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’
A tangle of brambles runs through his rockery.
We can’t dig them out, so we try to cut them back.
My father goes upstairs for the tenth time today.
We guide him towards his room, knowing he’s going to say…
‘I want to go home.
I’m losing the thread.
Is it okay if I go back to bed?
I’m so unhappy… I wish I was dead.
And what time is it anyway?’
His garden is overgrown. It has gone to seed.
That black-stemmed bamboo has stolen all the light.
The body remembers
All that heading the ball.
The rise and fall.
The rhythm and timing of it.
WAIT–
WAIT–
And then the quick step forward,
Lean, load and spring.
The powerful leap of youth and belief.
Rising up, up
Arms and hands stretching out to God
As the sinners below
Jostle, push, grasp, grab and scream.
The knees bending to join the hands in prayer.
Back arching, eyes skyward, searching for inspiration.
Quick stiffen in anticipation.
Rigid
Stance
Impossibly suspended in mid-air
Superhuman
Angel
Momentarily God-like myself
The hard contact of ball to head.
Impact steered with skill.
GOAL! GOAL! GOAL!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Of our true religion.
Euphoric congregational roar and adulation.
Rapture and fleeting pride
As I
Rapid fall from on high
Assisted by the pulling of brutish, earth-bound men
Bodies entangled, mud, blood and
Floored.
Who sees the stars around my head?
My crown of thorns.
The body remembers
What the mind cannot
It’s all there, written in sinew, muscle and bone.
The bowed legs, busted knee and memory loss
Stigmata for those that can read
The consequences of the cross.
Where did Mick Jagger go
and the Wizard of Oz?
Sauchiehall Street and
the smell of coffee?
Romeo and Juliet?
They fled, hiding
secretively backstage where
the black curtain
keeps them away from me.
Blaze the library!
Where I stored my rich knowledge
and poetic memories, and precious
golden bookmarks in time.
Char the shelves.
Tear the pages and crack the spines
of every beloved novel
that shall be opened no more.
Childhood melted.The
playground crumbled
and the swing chain rusted.
The monkey bars welded
into stumps of harsh iron.
Did the children not know
that they needed to play,
Imagine, and scrape their knees running?
Their fragile, vivid worlds
fell into blackholes without them.