Returning to the Sea

Lounge seems such an inappropriate word

Even though he sits there quietly,


Bolstered by cushions,


Idle hands folded casually in his lap,


Eyelids drooping.


The world outside is sliced into thin strips


By a Venetian blind


That’s probably dusty because they always are


And the dust will be him,


Slowly flaking away his four score and five.


There’s barely a sliver of him remaining.






Am I looking into a scrying mirror


Foreshadowing my own future?


I know I should be recording his history


Before he’s engulfed by it,


Making a record to give voice


To those albums of snaps I’ll be left with,


Illusions in monochrome and paling colour,


As if time


Could be developed at an optimum moment


And fixed.


Over Pendle, that whale of a hill,


An ocean of dark cloud swims before the wind,


Our present sunshine,


Colloped into long thin ingots of light pyrites,


Is too glittery to last.






Rain, when it arrives, will be unwelcome,


He’s already drowning


From internal springs which wont be staunched,


Bronchials barely coping with the flash-flood,


Bloated legs mocking emaciation,


And weeping pores.


Years must weigh heavily


To result in such weariness as this,


To press his world inwards,


Downwards,


To hobble him


So he shuffles between easy chair and dining chair


And bed.


Such, these days, is the geography of his life.






Just a room away a silent piano,


Old scores laid to rest,


Bass drone of the dehumidifier


Sucking the last of his fluid playing from the air.


All those composers he tended to so passionately


Are long dead


Even to him now.


Finally, all music must end in silence,


Whether the last note is emphatic


Or pianissimo,


The performance draws to a close.


He doesn’t even listen anymore,


A library of CDs


Mute in their sleeves as blanks.






Rain arrives


Pebble dashing the picture window


Bars of the blind giving an impression of security.


With stoic deliberation


He lifts his lids,


Turns to stare out,


Draws an arid breath across sandpaper


And, in a near whisper strained through a pillow, says,


“Looks bleak, doesn’t it.”


Words are feathers catching in his throat


Inducing a spasm of coughing


Which might just shake loose every bone in his body


From its flimsy fixings.


There is no freedom of speech anymore,


Not under this regime.






Newspaper still folded,


Too weighty with world events for him to lift;


It will be slipped neatly into the magazine rack


A daily countdown


No one seems able to cancel,


Not while he still occupies, however slightly,


The absence forming in his chair.


I pick up the paper and read it,


I can at least do this for him


Or myself,


Suspending my disbelief.


Also, I can look out at the slatted weather


Seeing he’s slipped into a doze again,


And, I admit,


Glance to check his thin chest still has a rhythm to it.


Cloud, shattering against unyielding glass, is running,


Via gutters and channels,


Back towards the undifferentiated sea.


There is a shallow beat to his chest


And his eyes prise themselves open


To look once again


Out into the drenching gloom.


“Yes dad,” I say nonchalantly, “It does look bleak.”

                                                                          




 Dave Alton