In Amsterdam in transit you have to pass security a second time  
(You do not belong here
     you do not belong)
Short of precious minutes I had the urgent answer to his question ready
‘My mother is in hospital’
He asked (have they been trained?)
Is she ok?

Time notwithstanding, keen not to let this opportunity slip by
of putting border policing in its rightful place
next to human suffering
I answered No.

She’s dying.

It worked.
He shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable, a bit ashamed
The ground I’d occupied and thought was safe sloped suddenly away
(Don’t feel it.
     Do not let him in.)
Hairline cracks appearing everywhere I said
‘But no one lives forever, right?’

Uncertainty.
Dark hesitancy in his eyes.
The thought of what to lose a mother might
perhaps be like.
Not good.

I glimpsed then the significance of mother to a man.

And then I ran.

My mother’s nurse’s eyes :
two suns from another universe
I do not comprehend them

I think she likes my mother
How can it be so?
Her stubborn angry upset
Her absolute determination not to take her pills
Everything is upside down and back to front
her head is lower than her back
Yet still her backbone bristles

The taproot is long

My mothers nurse’s eyes
hit me like a truck
a shock
I think she likes us
I do not understand

This sad, difficult and grey-haired daughter
This confused and angry, crying mother
half the size she was
battling with her fate
The struggle pulses all around
the cord between our hearts pulses also
this unfathomable tender twine

Perhaps she noticed
perhaps she heard the twang
perhaps it’s what was singing, dancing
in her eyes
This unfathomable light
in spite of all

I know - now - the winters of your soul
how long, how cold
how your dog still barks plaintively
     for your return

Yet still you kept a pitcher at the gate to slake the thirst of travellers 
Your nightwatchman still tends his flame
The hearth lit
The table decked  
     for my return

And now at last
    - the all but very last -  
I have the measure of your pedestal
imprisoned there on high
any move would break you

But serendipity has granted me the key
I know the craft, I have the tools, I will not rest
until I have you.

Come gentle soul, come fiery soul, come soul of alabaster and of platinum
    It’s time.  
        Let’s sit.
You have this table so very richly laid
in welcome

You stole the gold
Your coins were counterfeit
It was no fair exchange.
To say the (very) least

Off with his head, they say.

Not the head but the tongue say I
Those golden words that promised all
delivered none

And so: The tongue

It is that time of mellow fruitfulness
when all your acts of care and love
not few and far between but clustered, sweet and pregnant
are ripened
to the point of no return
about to fall

Your tendrils did their youthful seeking
sensing and encircling
quickening the pace they grew a scaffolding for life
latching and attaching
to the people, places, pleasures that made sense
and held you up
so love and life could ripen

In turn, all the moments of encounter
with the vine of your being
The thing not said, the turn of your head
to the side
when privacy is kinder
Your phrases and asides
The way you never see the beauty
of your profile  
The way you even think it humdrum
     (How strange.
         How very very strange)
These moments of encounter hold me up

And so we wove the scaffolding, the tapestry
entendrilling each other
in the reach for life
savouring the moments
before the final fall
But what a view from here
What a view
from

here

When you splintered
shards of your glass lodged in me
I can still feel their contours

The heart is a muscle
Every beat has accommodated these sharp edges
At first it hurt so much
I thought I would die

Perhaps I did
Perhaps there is no one at home
but my lodger

I was ravenous
I thought the sea was bottomless and dark
I thought the deep went on forever
But now I know
Your soft green fingers grow
everywhere the light falls
And when you go to sleep forever
      as we all must
some while from now
      not yet not yet
these tendrils will intertwine with mine
and softly line the seabed
of my cavernous heart