Poem 255

Old Bill has some problems staying anchored in time due to weight of lived memory or encroaching dementia … the voice calling him is his mother’s at first but segues into one that’s more like his own, reeling him in to remind himself which end of his life he stands at … there are similarities to Poem 147 …

( I like the summer images of corrugated iron, the futile box-stick-and-string bird trap, the feeling of heat and muffled sound behind the dunes, and the blue-packed ocean … )

The Old Man

For a thin moment
it was summer
somehow burning in the centre
of the tangled grass
the washing shining across the line
corrugated iron humping
against its nails

                                    Billy

the old magpie cocked an eye
through the loquat tree
at the box the stick and string
knowing what boys are
birds shouted
after days of rain
the cat put all his paws up
and baked his tabby belly

                                                       Billy

there was a steady beat of heat
back behind the dunes
in the bramble throat of the beach
as if the sun had melted
wax into his ears
and sound was passing somewhere
above him a gorse pod spat
open and he climbed
the leaden side of sand
breaking into the day the passage
of air and the breezing blue-packed
ocean

Billy Billy Billy
that was eighty years ago