Not Whimper But Bang

A romance like ours can’t just fade away 

becoming nothing; love like ours can’t end at all.

What seemed a slamming on of brakes

was merely a sudden change of gears.

I bought him grey for the nursing home —

grey pyjamas, grey socks ... at least its neat

but does suggest perhaps a gradual fading,

a bleakness. We don’t know what is coming.

It is Samhain, the festival of the dead.

My eyes can barely stay open. Emotion

is so tiring! But I need to light a candle

to honour the ancestors, before I sleep.

I feel as if I am living the Death card in the Tarot:

the death of a way of life or a way of being,

occasioning mourning. But we’re supposed to

come out the other side; it’s meant to be rebirth.

The cats are restless, coming in and out

repeatedly, as if looking for something. 

Or someone. A pale gecko has got inside.

It ran away from me to lie on the ceiling. 

I bought red wine tonight, even though 

the image of an old lady on her own, drinking,

seemed pathetic. I drank it anyway, two glasses

with dinner. Now my thoughts are all over the place.

A friend advises Beethoven. I might try Wagner.

Something cathartic seems called for tonight.

I’d like to clash some cymbals. Or kick down a brick wall.

I go in my mind to where he lies sleeping. I hope he sleeps.

I’ve packed his suitcase; I’ve filled in the forms.

He knows now that we won’t live together again.

Tonight in the hospital we cried together, then 

laughed at ourselves, then cried some more.

Some day soon, I hope we’ll find new gladness.

Yes, I suppose he is gradually dying, but aren’t we all?

Tomorrow they move him, tomorrow the new life

begins. I descend into depths of darkness.

April PAD Challenge #30: Fading away

He Was the One Looking After Me

He was the one looking after me

again, tonight, when I wept.

It was time to tell the truth.

Just the two of us 

quietly companionable,

reading the Sunday papers

almost as if we were home;

our heads close together,

the ward for once peaceful.

‘Do you get lonely at night?’ he asked.

‘Well I have the cats,’ I said, 

then paused and blurted, 

‘To tell you the honest, yes I do,’

and burst into tears. ‘But I can’t

take care of you any more, darling.

It’s become too much for me

to manage on my own.’

He nestled my head on his shoulder,

put one arm around me, with the other

stroked my hair — so gently, I felt 

my hair was golden silk.

It will be all right,’ he said.

‘You must do what’s best for you.’

We’d already talked of ‘the new place’

and when he’d be moving there.

He was getting jack of the hospital,

looking forward to leaving.

And so I said the rest: 

‘It’s temporary now, because that

was already authorised, but it will

become permanent. Unless you really 

hate it; then we’d find another place.’

I promised I’d bring him back home 

to visit, even stay overnight — 

when the kids can fly up for a weekend

(or any one of them) and assist;

afraid now to try on my own.

He held me untiI I was calm.

‘Drive safely,’ he said when I left.

‘I love you,’ we both said.

April PAD Challenge #29: Take a favorite line or image from an earlier poem this month and re-work it into a new poem. This title is a line from my Day 21 poem, Taking the Obs.

Oops!

The problem is 

she thought she was helping,

doing something nice for me,

and for her dad.

‘You can take the laptop

into the nursing home,’ she said, 

‘And watch all these

wonderful movies together.’

The problem is

I’m five days into my billing period

and now, for the rest of the month,

the service has been slowed.

I’ll have to wait a while

to see last night’s ‘New Tricks’

that I missed, on iView. I hope 

I can still work the blogs.

The problem is

after the slowing began

the movies didn’t 

completely download.

All that for nothing!

When I can just as easily

and almost as cheaply

hire the DVDs.

The problem is

I didn’t see the warning emails

until this morning, too late 

(now that she’s gone back home).

The dreadfulness of our task

had me retiring early to cry,

her staying up late on the net

to distract herself.

The problem is

he keeps saying 

he wants to come home

and I wish that too, but it can’t be.

And so we seek for ways

to help him, and help me too,

enjoy the new life

we have to have.

The problem is much bigger

than a slow internet connection

for about three weeks

and a few useless downloads.

(Meanwhile I sit here 

in the warm dressing-gown 

she bought me; money in my wallet, 

and a fridge full of food — bless her!)

April PAD Challenge #28: A problem

(Yes, I can still work my blogs.)

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #98

The Trouble Is Almost Over

Today his daughter and I

went together to look at two 

potential homes for him. 

We rejected the glamorous

up-market one with the formal air

for the old building, the laughter,

the residents’ vegetable patch,

the assistant manager whose eyes

grew wet too when I cried.

If we had dogs instead of cats,

I could take them to visit

(provided they had 

their vaccinations).

Anyway, a dog and a cat 

live there already. And 

I can bring him back here

to visit our cats and me. 

It’s just five minutes away!

He can take his own comfy chair. 

Peeping into rooms, we saw 

walls hung with photos

and favourite paintings,

personal bookshelves,

collections of souvenirs.

We told him all about it. At first 

it’s just for a try; then, if he likes it....

His face cleared. He started to smile.

April PAD Challenge #27: ‘The Trouble Is ..’

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #98

Cat Love

Sometimes, absent-mindedly,

he would call this black boy cat

by his eldest son’s name, then 

shake his head and correct himself.

I think that was even before

his mind began slipping —

though who knows when 

such gradual slides begin?

And the animal would snuggle up,

or lie at his feet for hours

when he worked at his office desk — 

‘Just us blokes together.’

I am giving him extra cuddles now,

the cat. I wonder how long before

he realises that this absence 

will not come to an end?

He and his sister have learned:

beloved humans go away and come back 

after days or weeks or even months. 

Some reappear after years.

I wonder how long it will take

this time, to understand? Meanwhile,

unless I mention them first,

the man never speaks of the cats.

April PAD Challenge #26: An animal poem.

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #98

Footy

Footy is soccer —

except when you’re ocker.

Up north they hold forth

on the pleasures of Rugby.

I find it ugly, 

a form of thuggery.

Down south they are fools

for Aussie Rules.

As I was born and raised

a Southerner — well,

you would have a right to be amazed

if I didn’t follow the AFL.

Not a native Melburnian,

I got to choose.

‘Carn —

the mighty Blues!’

April PAD Challenge #25: A sport. (Yes, you have to be an Aussie to understand this poem — no apologies!)

The Trouble with Love

The trouble with love

is just what your mother always told you:

it will end in tears.

The more love, the more weeping.

The trouble with love is

you do it anyway;

it gets you,

in spite of all the warnings.

You wake up one morning and notice:

Oh! Yes! The world

is a place of happiness now;

it has a shine.

The world, you notice, 

is focused around

the presence of that one person ...

that one radiance making the whole world glow.

You wake and it’s

immediate: you open your eyes to light,

a rich enhancement of daylight. You open 

to immediate delight.

Oh, love!  The long daylight hours

of its duration

are changeable with the time and weather.

Then comes night.

Sleep tight, little lovers.

Descend not into nightmares.

The day is over.

Say your prayers, and hope to survive.

The trouble with love is

it ends.  We all know this. 

After a moment it ends, or after a lifetime. 

It ends. We are left weeping.

Goodbye, my dear love.

I see you are going

leaving me richer by far, and weeping

after such influx of light.

April PAD Challenge #24: Love poem, Anti-love poem, or one of each. (This April, for these ‘Two for Tuesday’ double prompts, I have been trying to combine both into one poem.)

Also submitted for dVerse Open Link Night #41.

Morning Now

 Morning now is different,

and waking up unwelcome.

The cats still have the same habits,

but no-one now pats the bed

to entice Levi up for a cuddle 

when he mews at 5 am for food.

I don’t have to give the insulin,

take the blood sugar,

fetch the tablets ...

And there is no-one 

to snuggle back down with,

to read with, to eat with. Hard

to get used to using

the one-cup coffee plunger.

April PAD Challenge #23: Morning

Elderly Drivers

One and then another

white-haired driver dawdles

slowly down the empty street

I wait to drive across.

Inside my head, I think,

‘Put yourselves out to pasture!

Go and get off the roads!’

I’m glad I’m not like that.

My white coiffure conceals

a sharp and youthful brain.

And when I pause to assess

a traffic situation,

this is heightened consciousness!

(Why is that fool honking?)

April PAD Challenge #22: Judging

Taking the Obs

Around his neck, under his pyjama top,

a white plastic rectangle hangs from tapes.

It has a dial with lights and symbols

which the nurses can decode. ‘We think

it might be your ticker causing the falls.’

They take his blood sugar, more often

I suspect, than the twice a day

I’ve been doing at home. And they take

blood pressure, temperature, pulse, all that.

They check his water, intake and output,

and whether his bowels have opened today.

I am a visitor now. I must relinquish him

into other care than mine. I am training myself

not to ask what his blood sugar is this time,

nor at what hour they gave his insulin dose.

‘He’s in good hands,’ the nurses reassure. 

‘You’ve done a wonderful job,’ says the doctor. 

‘It’s enough! Time to let us look after him now.’

Only last week, when I started a cold,

he was the one looking after me,

wrapping his warm arms around me,

stroking my hair, soothing me off to sleep. 

I examine, now, as he lies in his hospital bed,

the smile in his eyes as we share a joke,

the interest in his voice as he asks the nurses,

‘Where did you grow up? Where did you train?’

I observe the way his hair curls over his ear.

I watch his hand take hold of mine. I perceive

the gentleness of his touch, the warmth 

of his loving clasp. I monitor not the beat 

but the inclination of his heart, its directions;

I try to gauge his happiness levels, his peace.

This has been my chief occupation for years.

I can’t stop noticing and caring, just because

he’s now in a hospital, being clinically observed.

April PAD Challenge #21: Under the microscope
Also submitted for dVerse Poetics: Duty Calls

Published in THE d'VERSE ANTHOLOGY, 2013

Let's Cuddle

‘Let’s cuddle,’ I say to our cat

or she says to me

or both to each other.

(We are using body language.)

Anyway, we snuggle.

She settles against me

in her usual spot on the bed, 

squeezed in between us  —

only you are not there

on the other side tonight.

She purrs hard and long

as if you were.

But we’re both restless.

We shift many times in the night,

as if that could make a difference.

We open our eyes briefly

to stare at each other

almost accusingly,

avoiding the huge absence

over your side of the bed.

In the end there is only one way.

‘Let’s cuddle,’ we say to each other,

snuggling as close as we can

and the night slowly passes.

April PAD Challenge #20: Let’s ...

Home Alone

(Now he must go into care)

Suddenly —

now —

I live alone

as of shortly after lunch today

though I didn’t know it then.

Another fall

and he’s back in hospital

after one night and a morning

here with me.

I was with him,

helped him collapse

gradually to the ground

and so, no injury

this time. (Nor the last.)

Twice in three days

is too much —

the buckling of legs

that just stop working.

No loss of consciousness, just

inability to stand.

Sudden. Total. What if

I had not been there?

And I can’t lift him.

All I could do

was put a pillow under his head

and call the ambulance

again.

While he was away

yesterday and the day before

I shifted furniture

to make the place safer:

things he could grab and hold,

strong enough to support him.

I guess it was just as well.

He used one to lean on

while I helped him down

slowly to the floor.

I put clean sheets on the bed.

His last night home

was comfortable.

I bought some more Zero Coke

because he likes it.

But he didn’t even have

one glass last night.

He was so tired,

and went to bed early.

‘So nice,’ he said this morning,

‘To be in my own bed

in my own home.’

But lately it’s been hard for him,

I know.

So much weakness, 

so much pain.

So much more I wanted to do here

to make this place

beautiful, and kind to him.

Now, how empty

such improvements seem

for me alone.

April PAD Challenge #19: A life event.

The One We Don't Mention

The favourite local delicacy
is not openly spoken of.
In fact I myself haven’t tasted it
for years, not since before even
moving up here — back when
it wasn’t specific to a place
so much as a time:
that experimental era
when we tried so many ways
to give our lives new flavour.

In these parts, I guess you could say
we’re in permanent time warp.
Indeed, the main ingredient
in the best of this region’s cuisine
is our staple crop, widespread
throughout the district. Old timers still
remember the Great Disaster — the raid
which put so many growers out of action
that the local economy went bust
and the hardware store had to close.

Of course, there’s more ways than one
to ingest what is often considered
a gift from the gods (at once
so pleasurable and so good for us
that some people claim medicinal
dispensations). Plenty prefer to enjoy it
while sitting around and smoking.
Out Nimbin way, though, our Mary Jane
creates the most wicked, most munchable
cookies, with that little extra something!
(At least, so I’m told.)

April PAD Challenge #18: regional cuisine

Nightmare

The place we are taken to is clinically cold,
exactly as alien abductees have always
described the environs they encountered.

I see sections of wall screened off
making booths or cubicles, where I glimpse
people — ordinary people like me, but looking
pale and still. They are restrained by cords, attached
to their bunks, and to alarming, strange machines.

They are for the most part silent, but
some moan or groan. Then those others, the ones
who look like us yet subtly different from us,
go to them and stop their cries. I see them probe
the inert sufferers with instruments, just
as we have been told of in all the stories
that we didn’t seriously believe.

I am conducted to a figure reclining on pillows.
‘Here is your husband,’ I am told as I recoil
from the creature before me. I cannot describe
that head, the bulbous appendage where you and I
have a nose, a mouth, a chin, a neck. Those organs
have become one single swelling, machine-like,
growing all over its face. It speaks, harsh-voiced,
incomprehensible, in a sort of rasp. I think, ‘Is this
what I am doomed to for the long rest of my life?

Eventually my time there is done — until next time.
I must come back, no help for it, but for now
I may return to my home. So I do. How odd, how
altered my home appears after that episode.
The cats are welcoming, but they can tell
I am edgy. Nothing is as normal, nor can be.
I am simply thankful things were no worse.
He’s off the oxygen now, and that disconcerting
mask. They’re monitoring his heart all night
and they think, all being well, I can bring him home
tomorrow, thank God. (Don’t you just hate hospitals?)

April PAD Challenge #17: SF and/or Fantasy

Mixed-Up Poem

The poem is distracted.
She wrings her hands
and curses freely.
I am so mixed up, she cries.

I amb so not a sonnet,
and as for pentameter,
I’d as soon have distemper.

Am I just some kind
of lune-y?
Well mate, you tell me!

I used to love
sitting in sweet silence,
all the dear words
waiting for me to choose,
then telling me, ‘Tanka!’

but now I ghazal them whole
I, the poem without a soul.

I cannot bear to stay alone
without a ballad to my name.
With all my rhymes and metres gone
there is no fame, there’s only blame.

Listen! the high coo
of a mournful dove flying
away from this page...

April PAD Challenge #16: a mixed up poem

Take-Off

Button up!
Make sure your strap is tight.

You don’t need a face mask;
this is a balloon.

Yes, I’m sure you won’t get airsick.
If you do I’ll slash the fee.

April PAD Challenge 15: Use the words slash, button, mask, strap, and balloon in your poem.

The End Foretold

We waited on a high hill
in a house with plate glass floor-to-ceiling windows
looking straight across at the mountain.

There were maybe twenty of us.
Three days of meditation and feasting.
And when I say meditation, I mean
laughing meditation, crying meditation,
singing and dancing and breathing meditation,
and trance-like healing sessions too.

My friend Karen (who died five years later
but we didn’t know then)
stood like an angel with arms outstretched,
holding the energy for others to heal.

My friend Kay, who shares with me
Nepal and Peru as well as this home Caldera,
talked with me over lunch. We explored
garden and forest, walking together.

On the last night, we all lit red candles
from one given by the Buddhist monks —
and that was from one originally lit
by the Dalai Lama. All that energy handed on,
rekindled over and over, that molten light.
They are candles for peace, we said.

We watched the dawn. The Y2K bug
wasn’t real, though we had slightly wondered.
The millennium arrived. We rejoiced.

                         ***

Later, of course, the new century
astonished us all with terrors
we hadn’t imagined. One by one the predictions
are coming true. Are we moving towards
the end of the world — again — or the Golden Age?

April PAD Challenge #14: Doomsday

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #97

Friday 13

I woke up
with a raging head cold.

Both cats
vomited their breakfast.

Himself
had terrible leg pains.

I hauled him off to the doctor.
By then, I was so dosed up
I managed not to sneeze
all over the waiting-room.

We both forgot to report
the shoulder pain he’s also had
for days, unresponsive
to anything we’ve tried so far.

But anyway, the doc prescribed
new medication, as a trial,
for the agonised nerves in his legs:
a quarter the usual dose
(i.e. half a tablet) to start,
at night. Come back in a week
and we’ll see if we up it.

At bedtime I opened the box.
Uh-oh, capsules. Instruction
on box: take half; on
manufacturer’s leaflet: do not
cut open the capsule
and use just the contents. So —
no medication for him this night.

We watched TV, a show I like.
He pronounced it corny.

I had a poem to write,
working in my head; stayed up
to get it written. He
interrupted, repeatedly, to insist
I ought to be in bed. I at length
erupted. (I wonder,
can the neighbours
hear me screech?)

We didn’t get much sleep.

I‘d like to be able to blame
Friday 13.

April PAD Challenge #13: Unlucky

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #97

Something Intense

My horoscope said, ‘Today
there will be an intense
conversation. You must
express your views.’

I waited all day. Only
the bland and average,
the practical, necessary,
everyday exchanges.

Then, that night, on TV,
the documentary — Australia
and the war in Vietnam. ‘Oh look,
I’m there!’ I said, pointing.

But it was only a glimpse, just a few
of the women from Save Our Sons.
‘They didn’t show me,’ I said,
‘But I was there that day.’

‘What were you doing there?’
I stared at him. ‘I was holding up
a placard. I was standing
with the others. I was protesting.

‘I remember, I was about eight months
pregnant.’ ‘Oh, you silly thing,’
he said indulgently. Then
our conversation became intense.

April PAD Challenge #12: ‘Something ...’

Also submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #97

Autumn in the Northern Rivers

Always so warm
the trees and flowers
behave as if it were Spring.

Wattle and bougainvillea
bloom profusely bright
along the roads.

Most years, even my roses
bud and flower briefly.

For a short while
we open blinds and curtains,
not keeping the temperature out.

The fans are off, the heaters
not yet switched on.
We let in the air.

Gradually the nights cool
after clear, sunny days.

The mountains stand out sharp
around the sky-line; the rivers
gleam, filling their banks.

‘Why,’ we say to each other,
‘Would you want to live anywhere else?
How could you ever leave?’ (We are smiling.)

April PAD Challenge #11: A season.