LITTLE BIRD

for MH

My nanan
is just a little bird
these days.

She is a birdcage.

She is so small
nobody knows
if she is in bed or not.

She is a pile of sheets.

Her heart breaks.
She has pain
in her stomach.

The bird is trying to fly.

SHRIVEL

for SJ

When he reached sixty his penis
shrunk up his prostate
like a snail hiding its face
in its shell. His hermit crab
sometimes showed its claws
unexpectedly in the bath or on a bus,
but if he fancied a bash
it turned tortoise, a slug
in his fist that slipped his hand.

SOMETHING AND NOTHING

Life is stepping down a step or sitting on a chair — and it isn't there.
— Ogden Nash

This morning I thought you were dead
until I saw your chest heave
underneath a heavy breath
that lifted the sheet then dropped it.

It's something and nothing. Either
could have passed, berthed side by side
like boats. Either, perhaps both,
of us could have gone in a gasp.

Is this getting old? When you woke
I decided not to spook
you with an open casket
that, after all, was never there.

But it nagged me, lingered. Worn ghosts
that walked out of the woodwork.
Fear, from knowing everything
is dissipating like a breath.

THE OLD PLACE

for RM

I walked by the old place today
but couldn't see much from the front
past the overgrown privet that swamped
the bowed gate. Round the back
that Flymo we left in the outhouse
was buggered, the blade crusted with rust,
and those Qualcast hedge-trimmers
were entombed in cobwebs. That tree,
that threatened to pull down the wall
of the office that squared the back yard,
had withstood the knocks of the council
environmental department and flourished.
The lawn was a wild meadow of dandelions,
thrusting out cracked pots. The greenhouse
had collapsed to a pile of bent metal
and shattered glass. That wooden chair
was still sat where it sat before
and the fleece that got caught out
in the rain and was ruined still hung
across its shoulders. Not everything remained.
The neighbours had changed more than once,
judging by the addressees of debt notices
dumped in recycling bins. Placing back
pizza leaflets a child spooked me
staring through the letterbox. Two brown eyes
that watched me scarper down the jinnel.
A fat, haired hand in an upstairs window
let a curtain fall back shut.

GOODBYES

for MH

Trains are leaving stations leaving

women waving handkerchiefs from windows

leaving lovers, aching in their braces, on the platform,

standing, leaning in the heat, leaving wives

for others, children, lovers, waving off

the past and turning from their grief and tears

to laughter, leaving wrinkles round their eyes

and mouths, their stockings falling down,

their trousers loose, growing thinner, smaller,

older, turning inwards, turning bone, leaving life

and lives, the quiet in their eyes that says goodbye.

Soundcloud recording of this poem here: http://soundcloud.com/gavin-hudson-1/goodbyes