a door closes
and I hear him

shuffling down the hallway
his wife of sixty-six years

my mother
asleep, almost invisible

beneath the blankets
as fragile as a baby bird

he stops to wind
the grandfather clock

smiles and nods
“I smell that coffee”

ninety years-old
and still "up-and-at-em”

pills to ration
a newspaper to fetch

dishes to put away
meanwhile

back in their room
dreaming

she remembers
everything

standing by his side
she turns to meet his eyes

Tom Spencer © 2019

The past speaks
to the present
often loudly
and with rancour
not content
to be buried:

revive me
reconstruct
the foundations
I've laid
let them perish never

for
there's a beginning
in everything
too well you know
I've been used
and abused
spited upon
and misinterpreted

wrong
must be righted
lest truth
be crucified
I await
to be resurrected

I was the voice
of conscience
the repository
of every man
and woman's tears
the refuge and sanctuary
of their pain and fears
the face and emblem
of humanity
over countless years

I stand
in dignity
still--
I won't step aside

I'll fight
for my right
oblivion
I'll not accept
lest in silence
I waste away
and in some
forgotten corner
weep and die.

There was a time when you and I
were impossibly tied to one another,
when we reached the ends of our ropes
we had no place to go but each other.

Years of the world trying to pull us apart
had only made us more tightly bound,
but when it came time for us to part
there was no way we could be unwound.

The problem with knots is when they get too tight
and you no longer want them teathered,
you're left with a single heartbreaking choice:
one end needs to be severed.

A rope that's cut will lose its strength
and the ends will begin to fray,
so one would expect it to loosen in time
until it finally falls away,

but even though my end was cut
the day we were torn apart,
the piece of me that remained tied to you
became the chains that still bind my heart.

My dear shooting star:
never fall from the heavens
just to be with me.