The final stanza recalls an incident when as a child I unwarily stood on a weed-covered step and the next moment found myself waist deep in the River Thames. Indeed, my father came running to yank me out, and indeed he was dead at an early age a mere ten years later of a heart attack.
---------------
As carping seagulls with a scythe of wings
Will swoop and dodge above some lusted scrap,
So I life-long made turn and flung my cap
At detoured baubles, glib that time’s fresh springs
Would always well with drop-flash chance like spray,
So that at choice I’d know myself and be
That man, that gift, I’d always longed one day.
But now in age the punch-struck fighter in
The ring has foul-guessed himself to the ropes;
Pummelled to ribs he knows his toe-danced tropes
Are helpless, the Reaper thrashing chin to chin;
Fullness of self cannot be seized or thought,
Drained, there’s no future like the spread-armed tree,
There’s only death, an unknown hence, for tort.
Truly, the end is nigh. Those forceful young,
Bustling in splendour of diploma’d craft,
Doctor, optician, professional-laughed,
Treat age with child-talk brusqueness of the tongue,
Shied by its sour-whiff flesh and slow-tread mind;
For them, life’s a dance floor, a strobe light spree:
One day they’ll find what all who die must find.
Slipping, a child sinks, river-drenched, and screams;
Chiding, my father strides and drags me out,
But ten years gone, he sudden died, my shout
Of loss killed self and now I drench in dreams.
Waist-deep in sorrow, let my end be mild;
Raging and blaming forced my loves to flee;
At death’s last lodging be it said I smiled.
====================
© March 2016
---------------
As carping seagulls with a scythe of wings
Will swoop and dodge above some lusted scrap,
So I life-long made turn and flung my cap
At detoured baubles, glib that time’s fresh springs
Would always well with drop-flash chance like spray,
So that at choice I’d know myself and be
That man, that gift, I’d always longed one day.
But now in age the punch-struck fighter in
The ring has foul-guessed himself to the ropes;
Pummelled to ribs he knows his toe-danced tropes
Are helpless, the Reaper thrashing chin to chin;
Fullness of self cannot be seized or thought,
Drained, there’s no future like the spread-armed tree,
There’s only death, an unknown hence, for tort.
Truly, the end is nigh. Those forceful young,
Bustling in splendour of diploma’d craft,
Doctor, optician, professional-laughed,
Treat age with child-talk brusqueness of the tongue,
Shied by its sour-whiff flesh and slow-tread mind;
For them, life’s a dance floor, a strobe light spree:
One day they’ll find what all who die must find.
Slipping, a child sinks, river-drenched, and screams;
Chiding, my father strides and drags me out,
But ten years gone, he sudden died, my shout
Of loss killed self and now I drench in dreams.
Waist-deep in sorrow, let my end be mild;
Raging and blaming forced my loves to flee;
At death’s last lodging be it said I smiled.
====================
© March 2016
