Stuff I'm working on

Please note this is NOT the old person the following poem is about....I just thought it was appropriate because she is old so they have something in common. This photo is actually of Daphne, the woman who lives in the flat above my Gran in Dublin. I've been visiting her since longer than I can remember - I can't actually ever remember being introduced to her or meeting her, only her being my old lady friend....my motives for visiting her have not developed too far, although I'm less won over by the engraved sweet box with single celebrations or, on a wild one, a packet of maltesers in. Her incessantly tidy house weirds me out but also makes me happy just because I can't imagine not visiting and she always tells millions of stories. I don't have to do much talking, although I have realized the stories have begun to recycle themselves. Her and my gran found a cat who would miaow at the window every day about 5 years ago, and have since adopted her; this is her in the picture with Daphne. Her name is Chatty. She's allowed in Daphne's house but only for an hour or so every morning and after she (Daphne) hoovers the whole place because she's asthmatic. She lives in a 'cat kennel' outside and gets into all sorts of scrapes. Bit of a nutter really. Chatty I mean.







I just wrote this poem today, which means I'll probably edit it more, but I thought hey presto I'd post it anyway:


The OAPs





The OAPs stop: she is bent for breath,
hollowed and hunched over and over
and over, leaning on the rail.
I think, below what we can hear,
is the sound of her lungs crunching
like a gravel footpath.
We could pick out the old ticker,
centrifugal but cramped -
even a heartbeat feels complicated. A deadening end.

He searches for the horizon, beyond the roadworks.
Epiphanies all logged and romance stocked
as he shields his eyes from the light with his fingers,
momentarily misplacing a method of moments that his memory
has made into a lifetime: the sun wipes his brow
with an astonishing hand. His eyes,
unframed, must see everything near
but of unconfirmed nature:
Red fog of traffic cones and children propelling
to indefinable distances and traffic signs
linger on the ground like a long mirage.
Builders swooping below ground level
like magicians in the neon noise of development.


So they stay, for all the time I am there to look.
I arrive and am gone like a loud staccato
Repeating nothing...in my righteous
imagination I am already
spelling their scaley spines,
writing a rhyme from a cracked tongue,
stirring and dissolving their memories,
satisfied as a cliche. I am
presuming a poem, an image,
in place of an untraceable story.