“Meeting her, unexpected, with another man, and me, with another woman, all four of us looking bemused by what the other had chosen in each other’s absence — suspense and silence — then the halted, faltering politeness of a nod, a handshake, ships passing in the night, signals no longer recognized.”
Silence in the garden. A hawk perched nearby. There are so many ways to die.
Death by Devilry
Silence in the garden. A hawk perched nearby. There are so many ways to die.
A cerebral bleed, minor, but enough to send him to hospital and keep him there.
Cured, ready for release, he would need extra care and added attention.
The devil lived in the small print. Too much attention needed now: his care home wouldn’t care for him.
Back to the old folks ward he went. There he lay, waiting for a vacancy in a home that would really care.
One day, Covid came a-visiting, stalked the ward that night, choosing its victims: you, you, and her, and him.
What killed him? A cerebral bleed, a minor stroke? Or a major stroke from the devil’s pen?
Bold words, bare words, a barren ward, another vacant place around a Christmas table.
Comment: Sitting at the breakfast table, with an empty space before me, I penned these words. So tragic, so avoidable. Yet how many families have gone through something similar in the past twelve months? How many empty spaces are there, vacancies that will never again be filled? I look at today’s figures from the USA: 18,466,231 infected and 326,232 already perished, an increase of 227,998 and 3,338 since yesterday. I am reminded of the words of Pink Floyd: “Is there anybody out there?” Blas de Otero also echoes through my mind: “levanto las manos: tu me las cercenas” / I hold up my hands: you cut them off. And yet it is Christmas Eve and there is still the Christmas promise of joy, and hope, and a new year entering. Let us raise our hands in prayer: and let us pray they are not hacked off.
He was a good man, and a better friend. He came over to mow the lawn and stayed for a beer. “This is gonna sizzle!”
Some called him uneducated, no BA, no MA, no LLB, but he had a golden heart and a PhD in the school of life and hard knocks.
I met men like him in Wales, coal miners in bars, steel workers on rugby teams, sheep farmers from the hills in the big city for the game.
Humble, they were, honest, hard men, hard working, intolerant of pretension and fools. When I went to university, nineteen and full of ideals, they pulled me on one side.
“You’re one of us,” they said. “However high you rise, don’t lose the common touch.”
I met men like him in Spain, foot-soldiers from the Civil War, riflemen, dynamite throwers with their skills learned at coal face and quarry.
Machado wrote poems about them: “Donde hay vino, beben vino; donde no hay vino, beben agua de las fuentes.” Where there is wine, they drink wine. Where there is no wine, they drink water from the fountains.
A good man, an honest man, an uneducated man, some say, who taught me more about life and how to live it than any university professor.
Comment: I read the obituary of one of my best friends in the newspaper today. He moved away from the neighborhood and we lost touch. But I never forgot him. As I have never forgotten those who shaped me in Wales and Spain. I have forgotten many of their names. But I have never forgotten their faces, nor their words of wisdom.At first, his passing brought a shadow to my life. Then I realized that no, he would not have wanted that. I think now of the good times, the laughter, the joy and, instead of mourning for him, I rejoice in all the goodness he gave me. Rest in peace, my friend. I will forget-you-not.
There is no science to sciatica, just a series of sensations most of them involving pain.
I don’t know how or when it comes, but one day, it knocks on your door and you clutch back and buttock.
It’s like a hawk at the bird feeder, flown in from nowhere to shriek and shred, unawares, one small bird.
Was it the flannel I dropped yesterday when showering? I stooped to pick it up, lunged forward, and that was it?
The pain came later. It kept me awake all night, my worst nightmare. No comfort anywhere. An endless
wriggling and every movement a knife blade stabbing at my buttock and slicing its slow, painful way down my leg.
The screws, my grandfather called it, a metal screw screwed into his leg, leaving him limp and limping.
I googled it today, sciatica, and they suggested an ice pad for twenty minutes, repeated twenty minutes later.
“Yes,” I muttered, “yes” and found in the fridge the ice pack we used to use in our Coleman’s cooler.
My beloved helped me undo my pants. “This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.” “No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache”
Tomorrow, I will call the chiropractor. She will bend me to her will, straighten my back, cure the pain, set me right again, as long as Covid lets me in to her domain.
My body’s house has many rooms and you, my love, are present in them all. I glimpse your shadow in the mirror and your breath brushes my cheek
when I open the door. Where have you gone? I walk from room to room, but when I seek, I no longer find and nothing opens when I knock.
Afraid, sometimes, to enter a room, I am sure you are in there. I hear your footsteps on the stair. Sometimes your voice breaks the silence
when you whisper my name in the same old way. How can it be true, my love, that you have gone, that you have left me here alone? I count the hours,
the days, embracing dust motes to find no solace in salacious sunbeams and my occasional dreams.
Comment: Another golden oldie, polished, rewritten, and revised. Today is Clare’s birthday and fifty-five years ago today we got engaged, on her birthday, in Santander, Spain. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago when she was visiting our daughter and grand-daughter in Ottawa and I was left alone to look after the house. I will be including this poem in my new collection, All About Ageing … in an age of pandemic, on which I am currently working.
My vision of absence and of the bereaved wandering, lost, the house the couple once shared, is sharpened in this age of pandemic in which we live. My heart goes out to all those who have suffered short term or long term effects from the pandemic. My premonitions and visions, my memories and dreams, reach out especially to those who have lost loved ones and who live in the daily reality of that loss.
“Eric, Phillip, Peter: why did you leave me? Why did you, where did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: you went out through the door, so silent, didn’t even slam it, why did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: I hardly even knew you, the house, my life, so empty without you, shadows so scary, why did you leave me, where did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: vacant and silent, lonely the house, such a big world without you, so full of menace, so full of woe, why did you leave me, why did you go?”
rogermoorepoet 