Poems for Geoff.

 

All out at end of play 

Fall

lump on head

Fall

blood spat up

Fall

metastasis in lung

Fall

growth in cheek

Fall

broken clavicle

Fall

broken ribs

Fall

numbness in legs

Up again.

Who’s the winner now?

You are my Heartland

You're the dark,
you're why I go soul-fishing, 
You're the dark,
You're the get-well-wishing,
You're my cosiest Basotho blanket and hat,
My darling husband: you're all that.

You're our grandson's first laternenfest,
You're the Imam's call to prayer,
You're the reason I made an entire child-nest,
And you're my rocking  chair.

You're the last smash that breaks the pinyata (can't do that a)
You're my one to eight billion and three.
You're my very last pastei de nata,
And of course you belong to me. 

Love means 

Not being able to sleep soundly in case your beloved falls over in the night.

Love entails 

Tending scars and strange bruising.

Smearing ointments over reddened areas.

Bending over old limbs and neck wrack-ravaged.

The weakened body’s still here.  

Flung about by that demon cancer

Who rages about in husband’s head, cheek and lung

(Though momentarily chastened with radiation

 and that other blunt instrument: surgery).

So:

Love means sitting quietly on a bench together

One of us has ice-cream, the other wine.

Gazing out over the same hardwon values

All argument laid to rest behind our shoulders.