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.

IN ANOTHER TIME

The old King agreed to entertain
The Empress. He stroked
his short beard
and worried the country
would come to grief

as if shook from a dream.
The old King slept.

Someone off stage shouted, 
"Get on with it!"
and a floorboard creaked.

She bowed. The Empress said,
"I have come for your Kingdom,
your jewels, your pearls
and your people.
I wish to break chains and unions."

The old King gave some crumbling pages
his signature. A castle wall collapsed.

"Take what you can," he sighed,
"but spare my feelings.
We who came before made the world
you want to make afresh.
We fought the same way.
Do not tread the battleground again."

The Empress conceded with a curtsy
and crossed fingers.
She knew better than this old sod.
Off with his head!

Somewhere in a foreign field,
a corpse
in bloodied armour grinned.

LOOKING AT BEDROOMS

for AA

When I was very small,
small enough to have a teddy,
a teddy made by my uncle,
my uncle who went to prison,
I remember the white prison bars 
of my cot, and beyond them 
the orange billowing curtains 
in a very small room
in a very small chalet
in a very small seaside town.

When I was up and walking,
say I was three or four, maybe older, 
I was a very late walker,
I remember I slept in a room
between a bathroom and attic stair
on a bottom bunk beneath my sister,
and the room was so small
that all I remember
was the bathroom was avocado.

When we moved house,
when I was five or six or seven,
I got my own room.
It was a small room
that housed tank engines
and robots and Millenium Falcons.
One day we took the chimney out
and made it a square foot bigger.
Then I moved out.

My bedrooms at university
grew progressively bigger
until I inhabited an entire extension
with its own sink and coffee machine
and a wide blue carpet.

The curve continued 
from doubles to king sized beds,
first, second and third floor attics,
to skylights that stare out over the rooftops
and let the breezes in over the pillows,
cooling the red linen
and all the time getting larger
until it will become a loft conversion apartment.

But when I am older I expect
to open a white door onto a single bed
under a re-inforced glass window.
I expect I'll be helped
the three short shuffled steps
over the beige berber to the bar
that the nurse will lower
before tipping me in.
In the night, I expect I will wake
and feel the high walls closing in
and see the moon cast it's ocean shadows.

*The image is not a bedroom I have ever lived in, but it did inspire the poem. Thanks to Amy Audebert for allowing its use.

LATER LIFE

for MH

Her fingers are fussing the big, green

button that holds her cardigan.

Taking pills to remember her stockings.

Getting dressed each morning

to sit in her chair. Her velvet mauve

slippers. A white crocheted shawl.

The television is silent as a wall.

Two raised stripes show she has worn

two bras, but no other underwear.

The clock fingers race and whirr,

eager to have the day done. The world

spins an axis about that chair.

The old–style bulbs fizz and stir.
It seems one is about to burst,
threatening with lengthening flickers.

Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.

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 GRANDMOTHER SHUFFLE

for MH

My Grandmother shuffles the cards in her palms,
but boxes them. These days her palms

are smaller, she remembers. She remembers the Luftwaffe
bombing Coventry better than dinners. She boxes them.

She does not notice. The shadows are creeping
over the kitchen like Luftwaffe. Those gentlemen

she courted in Birmingham remember the prick
of her hat pin. They got too fresh. It was only a first date

that slipped from her grip like a butterknife.
The Luftwaffe are thunder, sending her running

under the stairs. Now she is shuffling.
Her small palms boxing the names of her nephews

and grandsons.  She remembers them like a husband.
They get fresh each time they meet. The Cathedral is burning.

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