Introduction:
This poem was written as I looked forward to a continued recovery from two years of serious inflammation of the brain.
The illness has destroyed many memories. Images from the past have helped restore a sense of self and well-being.
5.
Limescale’s fine haze twins
toilet pan and kettle. That’s a record,
not decay; objects taken out and back
into the spaces I inhabit. Must reclaim.
Another sweep, enough to tip me on the carpet;
can’t do more than what I can; can’t enable or
prevent. No need to be – well what’s the word? –
more ratiocinative; what’s content — without a
puppy’s nip, a toddler’s tug. Soon gone, that sun.
Noah’s ark toys pushed into my speakers.
Knowing better may discourage. When cleaning,
only second-best will do. One thing my vacuum abhors is
discarded plastic strips. More mess.
6.
A sandcastle on one beach, left
in a distracted moment; thought-of
all the time: an eye’s blink in one view of God,
holidays that lift us from ourselves and remake
love; there; like sand in old shoes, pocket corners.
Those grains can’t help but be these things they are:
simply creatures born to die; preoccupied; in blinkers.
7.
Unfamiliar accents, prompted actions.
Spare talk of each disputed truth.
Having weather. Noticing in much-used music
counterpoints ignored for years. That dirge
a swelling faith in hope; won’t be as it was.
From here a path, a start, a looping back
in movements all along; no worth or point
to feeling lost; or falling. Should hand-holds fail,
this might cap it, earn a place, a platform:
just, benign, convenient!
8.
Between that meat, those mints, the stuffing.
Windows, guarding privacy, must hold apart
paired terms which being is allowed to be
– miserable, in pain; a cultic happenstance.
When half the time I feel but cannot say,
while knowing waits on me for speech,
not-quite a joke which doesn’t raise a titter.
Thanks for your nth time reminder that I can’t
lift any kind of spirit to this mouth, become
a ludicrous sub-Coward, nor bitterly-attractive
in any fashion yet. When diffidence speaks ill and
being ill, crushed lemon soothes my tongue,
a swollen gland beneath; that’s fine since, when this
weather breaks, we’ll get outside, but how…
Should I know. They say a cameo reprise could bring
a final flourish. When, having stopped, I lose again.
Grand gestures… That’ll cost you. On a pun’s edge,
Angels; nor any gift for wrapping, entertaining or confiding.
In the bathroom, I skim through part of my family tree.
It ignores my age group and its neighbours…
Adam Clarke-Williams
photos Jane Dunster