a thought ran away with me

 a thought ran away with me

language

a corral  a stallion

what can language jump over

but language itself

where would language gallop 

if the language of destination

we’re not the elastic anagram 

of changing thought

as planning planned to all along

 as planning planned to all along

scrap newt and bat rules

that’s what the headline said

and then they added toads

just for good measure

tales of the bank river

running to the golden treasury 

you cannot serve frog and mammon

so they chose mammon

and devil take the hindmost 

why write a poem

 why write a poem

why would you

strangle a poem at birth

drown it in hessian

thoughts come 

where would you send them

return to sender

poems happen

would you tear down the aerial 

un-dial the tuner 

poems are eternal

when everyone is dead

the poem will sit

for waiting to be read

read waiting

that’s why not 

~~~

look granddad

sit on the settee and shut up

or write a poem

we don’t care

but if you write a poem

i’ll read it

Am I my Father’s Keeper (first published in the BMJ in 2004)

Am I my Father’s Keeper

My 84 year old dad was in a nursing home and had pretty lousy short term memory. He also had a chronic and painful diabetic ulcer on the great toe of his right foot, and intermittent spasm of the calf muscles caused him to wince in time with an incessant and involuntary knees-up.

The vascular surgeon recommended a below knee amputation. After explaining this to my dad as softly as possible, I discussed with the registrar the level of the amputation (suggesting as high a level as was thought advisable to avoid a poor outcome from a more conservative amputation). I returned to my dad and spent some time explaining again that it was all for the best. Surely he would be better in a wheelchair without this intractably painful foot, and no longer having the risk of falling all the time.

However, when I returned the next day I was told that dad had undergone a lumbar sympathectomy because he had refused an amputation. His words were unambiguous: “It's stopping there—I'm not having it.” (Or, I guess, more accurately, “You're not having it.”)

“You bloody fool,” I unsympathetically muttered sotto voce, “You just don't understand.” I was exasperated.

But within weeks his ulcer had healed, and he was pain-free up to his death two years later from an unrelated illness. So, in retrospect, I am contrite about my superficial attention to his feelings. It might have been that the sympathectomy was more than palliative, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he did know best—that somewhere between his fossilised long term memory and the sieve of his irritatingly short term retention there was a deep pool of sagacity.

I smile anew at his reply to the nurse who admitted him to the ward, reiterating his name back to him condescendingly as, “Ah, Frederick the Great,” and going on to ask, “And do you know where you are, Fred?”

To which he made the exquisite riposte, “Well I'm not in Russia.”

an isthmus

 an isthmus 

it must be

but yet it is not

for the certain seas

see only the uncertain shore

an opportunity to erode

and in doing so

they become an ocean

without an isthmus 

yet

under the isthmus 

between the sea and the sky

the horizon oscillates 

upon a reef of clouds 

the ocean evaporates

to rain and settle it

once and for all 

if no isthmus isn’t 

what is sand for

draught

 draught

empty flask

filled with want

it poured out expectation 

i drank disappointment

a word moist with tears

formed of frustration

i filled the flask

at the thesaurus 

oh my word

what a refreshing drink

an oasis

it thought

time’s unforgiving metamorphosis

time’s unforgiving metamorphosis 

vestal divested

of her pedestal 

looks backwards

to the time when her marble shone

and now 

how the alabaster 

resembles a fairground figurine

with peeling pastels

won with the coin of hope

the memory of razzmatazz 

dimming and dimming

come on

(she cries)

whistle our tune

throw my switch

let the rollercoaster begin

make me scream again

and again for more 

let again’s forlorn smile

belly-laugh me