For Margaret

               Four months later

Unexpected visitors:

Margaret's daughter and grand-daughter.

Her benign presence hovered in the room;

I kept listening out for her throaty chuckle.

Her mind was elastic and stretched

other minds to find new possibilities

of life and living. 

When the family left Marg's essence 

remained as if she was reaching out

to encourage me to explore and dig deeper.

That was always her gift.

Hypothesis

The future looms insidiously. 

Although it is only fiction, 

it insists on its rightful place.

Unanswerable questions:

How long will I have to live 

within this illness?

Will I be diminished by it?

Hover above me and wait.

One genuine anxiety

draws them like a magnet

to engulf me.

I am drowning in an illusion.

Thinking aloud

i.

Here's the problem: how to convert sameness

into wonder without making it harder

to give myself permission to let go?

The morning light on the dark blue irises,

a walnut tree filled with a blackbird's song

make me unwilling to embrace death.

Maybe I should turn myself around 

and make every moment 

an epiphany, even moments 

of excruciating pain

or sinks full of dirty dishes,

not just morning light and the walnut tree.

But death as an epiphany

is a contradiction in terms:

we move from light, love, hope, energy

into nothing, nowhere with no 'I'  

to recognise anything 

or recognise that there isn't anything.

Let's pray for the tiniest glimmer

of chiara oscura to mark the transition.

ii.

An eternity without beauty, 

no wonder we call it death.

It has been said: “Life without music 

would be a mistake”; I'll change that:

Death without beauty would be a mistake.

If I have lived other lives,

I have no memories;

cannot so much as recall 

a sunrise or a baby laughing. 

Where has all that beauty gone?

After our very last life

are we presented with

a tessellation of memories,

no character list, no context?

And have we become so refined,

we're not even interested?

Not for me, thank you; I'd rather remain

unregenerate, human, flawed, 

open to beauty wherever it comes:

a friend's smile, light on the walnut tree.

Twice

I've looked back and found I've cheated;

my memory lapsed and I allowed

a cluster of lines to be used twice. 

Now, that's not on; needs examination

as if it were a repeated dream. 

“A patina of time”: that sounds O.K.,

white hair, wrinkles and, as well,

I display scars from fighting life's battles.

“The enduring years”: now, that's wrong;

it is not the years that endure

but roll on one after another, 

the way years do. I'm the one

who's had to endure life's vicissitudes.

“The mind's bright mirror”: who wouldn't 

choose illumination? 

As an image for life, fair enough,

despite the implicit teleology. 

Not aimless, not arbitrary, 

but promising meaning at journey's end.

I can see why I used it twice.

Hope, not strong enough for faith, 

but, for all that, worthy of love.