the relativity of two unrelated stares

 the relativity of two unrelated stares 

age looks deep 

into the past times

youth looks high

into the future times 

both are unfocused 

waiting for the clarity 

of the right time 

which neither realise

is now

hey high

hey high

a sign of the times

hanging on one bracket

squeaks ill of the dread

so 

i write my own poems

i read my own poems

i share my poems

meet me face to face

down in the woods today

and we’ll have a picnic

sandwiches of laughter

on a gingham cloth

we’ll pour each other’s poems

and drink deep

there on the stream’s bank

we’ll write with a stick

we wos here

at the going down of the sun we’ll bundle it all up 

and walk by the light of our brilliance 

that the moon will swoon over

 

i said he noticed things

 i said he noticed things 

grains

beached on the sands

of a life

time’s tidal times

visitors come and go

thoughts remain

memories

as deep as whales

blow time

you would think

as you do

that we would too

so sparkle

my sunny gifted boy

collect the grains

build your sand castles

for the tide is coming in

and life’s boat awaits

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.”