I’ve become an old man now
It’s something I can’t hide
For age is a condition
That cannot be denied.
.
But energy will linger,
So long as I survive
To pen these simple verses
That keep my mind alive.

The pressures mount incessantly
But I will overcome,
And  will continue marching to
The beat of my own drum.

I saw a thrush upon a bush,
a graceful bird was she,
and next to her I saw a rook
as black as black could be.

And as I looked, into my head
these words occurred to me:
Oh rook, oh rook, please tell me please,
why do we disagree?

For, after all, we both have beaks
and wings that we might fly,
and yet you know these things we share
just seem to pass us by.

Our main concern it seems to me
is how we might apply
abilities that each may have
that take us to the sky.

Beyond the rainbow we both soar
but what do we bring back?
For some of us it’s peace and joy,
for others its attack.


You may be black without concern
for my own speckled brown
but why should colour matter so
when, wings spread, we have flown

up to the heights and back again
albeit on our own
and you just treated with disdain
the friendship I have shown.

Although this thrush upon its bush
invited you to play,
you  gave a quite incurious glance
then turned your head away.

I do not want to seem to push
or tell you what to do,
but if you want a friend, this thrush
will still be here for you.

I have these thousands of words
jostling each other at the back of my head,
trying to force their way out
in a certain order, a particular pattern;
trying to express something.
What?
And every so often a combination of them
will be expelled  in an unexpected way,
after we roll them around our head
as though they were candy
rolling around our palate,
being tested for flavour,
for consistency,
for shape.
Toying with them,
teasing them, denying them their natural
conclusion.
Sometimes we feel frightened,
we feel threatened,
we are fearful
that we may reach the end
of an exhilarating experience.
And then the candy dissolves,
the words force themselves into consciousness,
and are revealed in a form that
in fact
enhances our experience,
provides  a new sight to every sound,
a new flavour to every consistency,
a new pattern to every thought.
And we call it poetry.

He was being interviewed on the box,
having famously engaged
in a different type of box
many decades earlier.

They, rather unkindly I thought,
produced a recent picture of him
stripped to the waist and in his boxing shorts.
neck larger than his head,
spindly legs at odds with thickened torso.
His hearing clearly impaired
by the damage sustained to one ear.
His balance slightly unsteady,
but a reminder of what used to be.
I felt really sorry for him.

And then I thought
who am I to judge?
Perhaps his life would have been pitiable
had he followed any other course.
Perhaps he might regard
the loss of certain faculties
a small price to pay
for the pleasure and fulfilment obtained
from the pursuit of a career
that was more satisfying
than any other that was available to him.

The thought sustained and cheered me.

In one of her last few semi-lucid moments
my mother quizzed me.
She gazed at me myopically
and seemed to be asking
herself as much as me.
“Did I really love you?”

It was the first firm indication
of a previously suspected
demonstration of approaching
senile dementia.
There were others,
more mundane,
less cerebral,
mainly related
to her toilet habits.
Clues that were easier to ignore
than to acknowledge.

What did she mean by it?
“Of course you did”
was an instinctive but meaningless response.
She peered at me uncomprehendingly,
as though my reply
bore no relevance to her question.
A question that has haunted me
for over forty years.

But how could I doubt her love?
Had it not been for her concern,
I would have perished ‘neath the surgeon’s knife
on my return from evacuation
in Fakenham.
She never would have dared challenge
a doctor’s diagnosis
on her own behalf.
She was of the generation
and the class
that treated medical practitioners
as gods.
But for an offspring she was quite prepared
to fight both tooth and nail
in some basic, ritualistic simulation
of a jungle tiger’s protective shield
at a perceived  threat to its young.

And later,
when she rushed my sister and myself
into totally unorganised evacuation
to Llanelli in order to escape
the sudden perils of flying bombs and rockets.
How could I ever doubt the love
that she exhibited in my presence
in her debate with the headmaster
of the local Grammar School?
Her insistence that he accept me
despite my lack of Welsh
that would ordinarily be a
basic entry requirement.
Her refusal to accept
the rules and regulations
was a mother I had never seen
nor could I have imagined her
to be capable of
such persistent challenging.

Thus, my mother, tottering on the brink
of what was to be a life-annihilating
dementia, asking me, in a rare, lucid
moment, if she had ever loved me
would seem to be a non-sequitur.
Was it a sudden recognition of
a coldness that she might exhibit
to the world, but which did not reflect
the love that she really felt but
failed to exhibit?
For that matter
was the “me” really me or was it
some other family member with whom
in her later stages of dementia
she confused me.

But it has induced a question
that now I have to pose myself.
The recollection of those many
wonderful experiences
that demonstrate
the lengths to which she was
prepared to go
to defend those values
which she honoured
though rarely overtly.
render the question
meaningless.

Unless, unless it be reframed
into an accusation of my own
failure to recognise
to appreciate
to reveal
the extent of my own feelings.

Perhaps it was I
who should have posed the question:
“Did I really love you?”

I find the simplest things
begin to have the power
to irritate me.
The fumbling with the buttons on my shirt;
the standing, balancing uneasily upon one leg
while pulling on my socks;
the insecurity of standing on a chair
to change an electric bulb.

Today marked the low mark
of my dejected spirit.
The simple act of fastening
the zipper on my coat which
caught up in the cloth and then
refused to budge.
I was reminded of that symptom of ageing:
first you forget to pull your zipper up,
then you forget to pull your zipper down.

My god, I feel depressed!

For so long were we happily united.
The divergence began a few years later.
It marked a time of sad and poignant loss.
A death with no cadaver.

What had we lost?
What had been ours to share and was no more?
How to apportion blame?
Why should blame even need to be considered?

There had been so much unity.
Our lives had meshed so thoroughly
and what had fingered one,
had snared the other.

Nothing is ever lost  (a physical law).
Every negative implies a positive.
So where was to be found
the serenity and joy
that had marked so many gleeful years?

The vacuum was vast and needed to be filled.
Her arms were opened wide;
while mine were clenched about myself.

I thought I could discern a pattern:
a repetition of highs and lows.
Perhaps, I thought, this could be the start
of a voyage of self-discovery,
and since, as Proust has said,
such voyages are less concerned
with seeking new landscapes,
than having new eyes,
I will have to microscopically
examine every facet of myself,
in order to find my true identity.

Then, perhaps, we will also learn
how to restore that unity.

And yet, and yet, the question
returns and re-echoes again and again:
After so many years, so many years,
how could we diverge so rapidly?