Absence in landscape made by millennial crawl
Bow back fills with air
the spaces
Minuscule, obscured
the valley torn asunder
Intelligent design?
Air shaped memories
shades of light
patches of dark grief
Pick out the details:
that patch of yellow diamond, those
Caravaggio peaks
Muscular grounds, weaker than Bow,
always passing through
Thinness of air and I am at Cogne
My sister tries to skip in the snow.
Sliding on my bum and skis into my Dad
My mother’s brave and terrified technique
Grief is the shape of a valley
the air of dying thin
at altitude our absent ancestors reside
1.
The colour of the ceiling
Artex swirls which revolve if the drip has been off can sometimes be as many as six colours at once
Not only colours
Shades too: green, white, a little rose, hint of blue, off white behind, yellow white at different times of day
The six colours vary. That is, they vary when I see that far
Carer arrives, their names change but their hands are always cold
As she lifts me, I am taken by a wave
The board beneath my feet feels firm
My arm muscles strain, I must turn
I have never seen the bed sores on my back but I imagine them as gradual, inch by inch, decay
Like the compost heap in my garden
My prize winning raised beds
I hope Barry has been weeding them right up to the lawn
The edges of my body are giving up
Each cell has fought so long
Now they surrender
2.
The board swings back towards the sun, it blinds me for a second, the sail drops
I pull back with every bit of my free arm pulling
I am upright and suddenly still
The water glistens, the Greek sea, warm, warm sun, a fresh gust, I am nineteen
My body rests again on the scabs, the sheet of the mattress, plastic cover
The mattress itself has moved little
They should turn it
The scabs are searching for a new resting place, to settle back again
The cover moves, the cushions behind are warm
These is a faint smell from outside
I feel the pollen in the air
My geraniums must be flowering by now
And the apple blossom
Will live and die without me ever seeing them
The drip is turned up, the wind lofts
Fills the sail, suddenly, very quick now, skimming the aqua green sea
Across the slow moving waves
Steer into the wind to pick up speed
My muscles feel surer
I adjust my feet, toes dig in, knees bend a little
I arc my spine forwards once more
Bend my knees a little more
My spine holds on to my board
My spine holds
The scabs achieve their place, become peaceful
Mum will be here soon and the next job will be to eat
3.
I am thirty four
The colours have shifted again
Six more shades, none the same
Barry looks in
Says something I do not catch
The radio is on, Radio Four
I push a word across my mouth, keeping one side closed it emerges, and then another, slower
“Turn it up”
The carer leans in. I smell her sweet perfume and soap
Like the Jasmine by the shed
Has it been cut back?
What time of year is it?
What month?
Perhaps on Gardeners Question Time
“What dear?”
“Turn it up”
Small salvia drip onto my neck
She has not noticed
It will dry there
The stems of my roses reminded me of spines
4.
I need to tack round against the swell
And head back towards the beach
The wind has changed yet again and suddenly there is the swell
I’m going over, inevitable
Board tips up and throws me off into the sea
Tied on, so I pull the board back, re-board
Dad’s on the beach with the camera
Better take the board in carefully, give Dad a good shot.
The sun is behind him
The picture will be good
5.
The archers over time for medication
There is an itch now at the base of my spine
Like my wet bikini with sand in
My spine that mocks me everyday
A tingle like a slight pain
Just where I cannot reach it
When I move back the scabs again will shift
The itch will be forgotten
The spit has dried
There are as many shades of pain as colours on my ceiling
Some are constant, remain through each day
Some are special visitors
I can measure days, months, years, out, in terms of the quality, texture, name and location of the pain.
A grand tour of my body’s self-destruction
Planned and carried out by my bloody spine
But I try not to. It is, as it is
There are seasons within seasons in this room
But they are all the same
Nothing seems to grow in here
There is no warm sea
Only the urine bag
6.
One day the first bud came through
I was in my chair
It was just peeking through the surface of the soil to greet me!
The garden was taking shape
“Mum put that by the pond”
“Turn around the chair”
“Good”
“Can you put the compost in the greenhouse?”
“Shall we enter?”
“Yes, of course”
“Well then we need to work harder”
“What about the raised beds?”
“Let’s plan it out”
Every project to keep the spine in place
How?
Now the morphine is my only project
7.
When was that, my last trip in the chair?
When I was….
The Archers is over
Two hours to tea time
Four hours to Mum time
Carer on her break
The hole in the day, the hour of fullest despair
Will I make it to forty?
I could call someone
Or someone could come
One of the children
My fingers seem cold
Let me remember my spine
Each segment in turn
And try to decide once and for all, which one gave me all this
The itch is back
The shades are at six times six now
Shadows over more
My board is drying in the sun
Dad will frame the picture
My flowers one day will bloom
I will never again leave this room
we take our first step
we learn to walk
i walked into to you
her impossible skin
in the cream smell
of the sun tanned arms
returned
there are only second acts
we do not see the first
traces of the smell returns
her leg
that first moment held
i saw hannah
her body red
neon strip light refracted
light her matted hair from behind
it was a moment
as the bullet through barrel pulls
the kinetics of life
the exhaust
her face squashed perfect
looked at me
her eyes opened
liquid slipped through
there was nothing else
i was the first she saw
the impossibility of her
the cost of first sight
i will grow older
and face the shudder
the turn away
hannah’s shadow grows
and in the silent silos
only ourselves sit beside her
and stroke her head
at last we are alone
father and mother
encrusted iced continents
and so hannah grows.
now i take my first step
I learn to walk
I watch the reflection of me
become focussed
and i find you
what if i had missed you
and floated on
into stone
i shudder
that tiny shadow
grows and lengths
now
her impossible resemblance
echo of my sister, my niece
in cycles
so her girl will have a girl
will she return?
no matter is created
nor destroyed
claudia is reborn
her energy to become
her sense of self returns
impossible like hannah’s shadow
finales written in hope
when you become whole
lifetimes are changed in form.
1.
Legs slide over the edge of bed
Trousers pulled on
Shirt begin to button
Inside the fold of her skirt I suddenly sit
Sit in my home
In the maze of the fabric I am searching for her
Lost, alone
Button my shirt
Birthing me she dressed me for life
Laying my head on her breast
I remember too the soft cheek
But these pleats engulf me now
Deeper into the folds
She is there walking alone
On swollen knees
Scarping the wall to brick in anger
Dancing lightly on her toes
I pull a jumper over my head
Blinded I am in her darkness
I hide from the promises
We speak of her safety
Of the company she needs
Would she leave me alone?
2.
There are places that a child should never see
Secret folds of skin
The first place I saw in life
The spaces between us should be kept
The raw red sore beneath
And then
The crystalline sound of aluminium foil
Pushed through
In variety of shapes, sizes, colours
Purposes
Damian Hirst shelf in my mother’s kitchen
Aspirin to dissolve
The pill pouch like the folds of her tummy
Needed simple care
I stroke her forehead
She is hot
I am feverish
She makes me smile
The glass of water, cold
For these moments all life and death are here
All memories are condensed into this dead of night
We wait the life of morning
There are lives of carers that we do not want to live
You can see too much as you try to fix things
And all the past is wiped clean in that sight
It is the nudity that shows the helplessness of flesh
That you cannot walk by
There can be a gown which flips open
There can be unanswerable questions repeated
And slowly all surfaces are covered
With crayon landscapes and the walls become paper
The frontiers of the world close in
The meaning of a cardigan recedes into the impenetrable
It is a skirt
I can wear it as a skirt
What is a skirt?
I feel my anger rising, why can’t you understand?
I snap
I am angry at the impenetrable
The crystalline sound of aluminium relieves
Until it doesn’t
I cannot be here now seeing this naked body needing care
I cannot fix this
I see the veins strain in her swollen knee
Her legs that carried me
I embrace her and want to see her covered up
Her face so familiar I cannot describe it
The lines of my life in each fold
I cradle it now in my hands
“If you love me let me die”
There are places that a child should never see.
3.
She is free
She is cycling
Her skirts fly
She laughs
She is a girl
She lies down
Listens to the RAF bombs
She is escaping
She is wearing her apron
Packing cakes
Giving birth
She is doing the accounts
Colouring her hair
Replacing our garden fence
She is the soul
She watches her husband die
Slowly in their bed
He is cold
She watches her daughter die
More slowly in the hospital bed
Without losing faith
She holds it all
She is the sun
She fades in twilight
She sits in church and cries
Making her hand bleed
She remembers how to dance
She is on her bike
She is free
What slender lines the river seems to hold
Flashing past on my way home
From home
Vermeered yellow patch this landscape less than whole
The snow at Cogne
Our fortunes in the bar foretold
Cycling to school the houses rushed past
Declan laughing at Janet and John books
Fingers stained with ink
Dungeon and Dragons our world
The chain off greased back at just past Kings Park
Pushing back on the cog with greased fingers cold
Discovering and losing so much
The salt on the wind
The decay of childhood into silences
Trying to keep hold of the sofa nap
Wanting so much to know
Making love and trying to keep
The feeling within and the women that i hold
Then
My children bounce on my bed to play
And after seconds they take themselves away
My sister’s life in mine the memory dissolves
Our lives as fleeting as this view
His clothes we bagged up and they sat alone
Airless, preserved
The twine unravelling over time
The memory of him
Slowly frayed
Grief decomposes over time
In sorting out a damp basement
The bags uncovered
Ripped plastics, his jacket spilled out
In part now rotten with damp
As surely as his corpse was made
Into nothingness before heaven
I cannot put his body back into these suits and coats
I cannot clasp now the sounds he made
The final stage of death
When new grief replaces old
His death displaced
His cuffs, his sleeves, his trousers legs
Somehow, betrayed by time
The darkness comes
When I am all alone
I look for something to hold onto
Finally, I find you
We have one morning on this earth.
I woke on mine.
The sound track of my adolescence,
breaking on my insecurity across the sands of Bournemouth,
and smelling like the salty taste of Maria Costello’s mouth –
I did not know how to kiss – is the sea.
Passed Our Lady Queen of Peace,
by the cross roads,
the back drop,
to failed fumbling with bra straps
racing time and discovery,
was our beach hut.
That church, sat between me and freedom,
condemned me to even failing at solitary ejaculations,
held the altar that I served on.
John Wheaton’s elder brother had such singular purpose and stamina,
in all confessionals held
late at night on the roof of Toft,
the Bay below,
Dad’s homemade wine and our rolled cigarettes,
Feeding other peoples’ exploits, never my own.
It was well known, that my mind became like so much seaweed if a girl was with me.
And later,
I did not see them take his body from his bed.
I saw only the corpse of my father, a stranger.
Then: when I no longer cycled to Christchurch to open the shop on a Sunday,
and the sound of the tube replaced the sound of the sea,
and Delia invited me to her flat in Finsbury Park,
with the love notes from her ex still on the fireplace surround,
then all the secrets unfolded and in all these discoveries,
in the relentless drive to do.
So I took a twenty five year journey away from You,
and comfort,
and knowing how to be.
Each morning the beach is remade, smooth, virgin soil, redemption in a landscape.
Each morning the tube leaves empty and the mass of humanity moves from one place to another to earn a life worth living.
We trust in their repetition.
The sound of breaking waves,
my children asleep,
my wife sitting reading,
the sound of the breaking waves asked then, how should you live?
They still ask, who do you want to be?
And gradually we are alone again.
Amid the clutter and the chaos of my sister’s death, I remember most of all her faith.
My mother crying on the phone, her mind is going:
Can I go back to God?
Will he take me?
We have one morning on this earth.
We need to know how to use it.