December 16th 2015

After thinking about absolute and other options I composed these lines about Alzheimer’s disease. Anything is possible. Just suppose that by some intervention, divine or otherwise, the sufferer were offered options!

 

Al’s Place.

I got an e-mail from Al,

Zheimer’s at dot eye e.
It read “you’ve outstayed your welcome there,
Now you must move in with me
For a spell.”
It read, “Consider your baggage carefully,
I don’t have a lot of land,
What you don’t need, leave behind
You must come hand in hand
With the water; not the well”.

I resurrected my valise and trunk

From the cobwebs in the loft
One to go, one to stay,
Hard decisions and soft
Down to me.
William Trevor is indispensable
Heaney, Joyce and Yeats,
There may be room for Mark Twain
Robert Frost, perhaps John Keats,
Or Robert Kee.

Mothers auburn hair must come,

The smell of ash and beech.
Bubbles on a blackberry,
The pinnacle of speech
On Attenborough’s velvet tongue.
Pain and regret must stay in the trunk
With all the failures, accounts overdrawn.
A myriad of wasted days and years,
Every bishop, rook and pawn,
Each hymn and psalm ever sung.

The words of honest men will fit,

A pair of speckled eggs.
One drop kick from O’Gara,
A glimpse of stunning legs
On Jolly Angelina.
The voice of Leonard Cohen,
The notes of Matt Molloy,
The box of Sharon Shannon,
The small unbridled joy
Of concertina.

Weddings, divorces, giving up for Lent,

I’ll leave these all behind me
With hypocrites fools and fakirs,
Don’t need these to remind me
Of sins of the past.
Porter and gin, whiskey and rum
No room for that much trouble
Maybe a pint of Ratharney well water
Or the smell of a stew a bubble
After the fast.

Trade Unionists, usurers, teachers,

Politicians, rapists of the earth,
Will have no function where I’m bound for,
Better a handful of dirt
In my overnight bag.
My children as children I’ll bring
That way there’s room for all,
A panorama of Irelands face
From Dingle to Donegal,
One valley, one crag.

The Inny’s a must and Newcastle wood

The heavenly blackbird song,
Gaelic and soccer I can do without
As well as the two faced throng
At funeral mass, mercy lacking.
Lots of room for a smile, a joke, a kiss,
A strait flush or winner at ten to one,
The truth takes up little room
Now that I’ve begun
To start packing.

Angela’s mischief; priceless;

Shannon’s incomparable smile
Goes in the going bag,
With Barry John’s unique style
Of hanging down his clothes.
The sea, the sun, bog and canal
Green grass, cerulean sky.
There must be room for these
To travel when I say goodbye
To the land of ‘I suppose’.

My glasses, China and Niamh,

Are tucked in my valise,
Everything else left behind
Perhaps room up my sleeve
To carry ‘Amongst Women’.
I’m almost packed now, ready to go,
One way ticket in hand
Al will be expecting me,
To join his forgetful band,
He knows I’m coming.