Gardens all hedged and neat swell
Bloated overbearing their borders
As every tethered flowerbed
Liberates its weeds: stars blossom
And streetlights sink beneath
A rising tide of trees where
The last humans, tails regrown,
Clothes abandoned, have now
Ascended: fast forward through
Decades of this slow green tsunami,
Decades of scouring rain that seed
Fish teeming seas where a white whale’s
Breaching:
but then he wakes up,
Desperate for a wee, checks the clock
Eight a.m. and hears the old man
Singing, nips to the toilet with a
Morning Dad and would you fancy
A brew? begins another day of
It’s not his fault mumbled fragments
He can’t help it he’ll somehow
Decipher, always cook the same meals
On the same days he needs routine
Change trousers and underpants with
S’allright Dad these things happen
Help him stand, remind him how
To walk again: and later when
The old ‘uns gone to bed,
Curse silently, sees himself
Two decades on
Mumbling fragments,
No longer sure who he is,
Being told what time
To go to bed
And always smelling of piss…
Kevin Patrick McCann
Illustration Nick Victor