In the side-ward,
Skin growing on
Forgotten cups of tea,
We sit, my mum and me,
While cancer drains
His scrap of life.
Grandad dribbles,
(Doesn’t know me)
Nightshirt stained with spit
We no longer rise to wipe away.
My mum begins to nod:
Where I look out crows
Drift with smoke
From the crematorium,
Frost has cast nets
Across the sedge,
Mist begins to ease up
Through the trees,
A breeze edges in
From the sea.
Not six months ago
He’d have turned the heads
Of silent nurses
Who now lift him
Like a shopping bag:
I listen, begin to hope
Each choked wheezing
Will be his last.
Kevin Patrick McCann
Illustration Nick Victor
A new book of poems