33

A child’s swing in the orchard
hangs below the apple tree.

Early bluebells
tinkle in the hedgerow.
Why do foxes wear gloves,
I ask, in my innocence?

My grandmother,
a young woman once more,
stands in her kitchen
humming her morning music
while she bakes the day’s bread.

My grandfather,
skeletal in the evening sunshine,
shifts his long, black shadow
from side to side
as he scythes the grass.

34

Time’s fragility
dwells in all our bones,
but rarely in our minds.

I look at them,
those twin tomb stones,
with names and dates

time-worn now,
carved into their stone.

I blink, as they sway
in the twilight
of my own
fast failing eyes.

Commentary:

A Mexican Mask outlining a person’s three three ages. The small, pearl in the centre – seed of the child. The central face, bearing the pearl beneath the nose – youth and beauty. The second face – old age. The white skull – the individual’s death. How quickly life passes. I turn and look, and so many ages have passed me by. And so it is with all of us.

One of my friends dropped in to see me today. I coached him rugby (Jeux du Canada Games, 1985), when he was 18 years old, heading for 19. Now he is 59 years old and heading for 60, if he hasn’t already left it behind. Oh the memories – tread softly, for you tread on my dreams (Yeats). And it is so easy to substitute memories for dreams.

Time’s fragility dwells in all our bones, but rarely in our minds. Alas, in our minds as well. I notice how forgetful I have become. I see life my past as a railway track, the two rails joining, undivided, as they fly into the distance. “Railway train, running down the track, always going on, never turning back – choo-choo – I’ve got a one way ticket to the blues.” I remember the words and the tune, but I don’t remember who sang. Clearly time’s fragility is beginning to enter my mind as well.