After the funeral of my Aunt in Wales, I visited my last remaining relative of my father and mother's generation: the last of my uncles and aunts.  Who, importantly, is a person in her own right and not just a symbol of some sort.  But I do feel a gathering sense of loss as, perfectly naturally, but unforgivably these people who were part of my growing up and continuing life, cease to be.

     The words that end the first stanza, came out of the blue and gave me pause for thought.

     They stayed with me when I left my aunt and I have been thinking about them ever since.  The poem that I have written formed itself around those words, and I used odd sheets of paper that I found in the hotel where I was staying to write out some of my drafts.  Most of the work on the poem was done on my portable computer and I now feel that the work is ready to be posted.

     I am still unsettled by my aunt's sudden pronouncement and I have tried, in the poem to give a sense of what I felt and what I have been thinking about since.

My Last Aunt

Who else is there

who cares enough,

was close enough,

to match realities and say,

“You have your father’s hands”?

Five words that spring

pain-pleasured thoughts

– the double edge of memory –

whose cut’s self-healing,

because remembering’s

the only truth

that’s left. 

And knowing, too,

such observation’s limited

to just one fragile life:

the final representative of

those who’ve gone before.

She holds a telling knowledge.

From

            existences,

both mine and his,

she draws the parallels,

as sequences work out,

or not. 

Her collaged times

are fragments of the present-past:

the incongruities

that shape a life.

I do feel that this poem picks up on themes that have been concerning me recently connected to ageing, death and memory.

POEMS IN HOLY WEEK iii. Tuesday - Life

I scrabble back on course with this third poem in the Holy Week sequence - not necessarily in terms of theme, but certainly in terms of production.
          Swimming is a constant source of inspiration for me and I am slowly but surely turning into a caricature of an Anglican vicar who has a single source of metaphor to explain the world!
          This poem however does, I think, take what I do and make something of it.  Swimming is important for me and it is hardly surprising that it should figure in my poetry.
          I am still trying to keep the meditative quality of the week in my thoughts and also the consideration of mortality.
          I have attempted to follow my friend Ceri's observation that in a previous poem I had ' looked and focussed in on the ordinary [and] have found a vein of truth'

Poems in Holy Week

iii.       Tuesday – Life

Sometimes, just sometimes,

swimming’s simply joy:

the strokes are almost effortless;

the water parts to let you through

and closes carefully behind

as though accepting your

progress and welcoming

your presence as a guest.

You are confined. 

                                   The

floats mark out demesne

and the black line of tiles

shows the direction you

should take;

                       they even indicate

when you should turn

to try another length.

I swim a metric mile

each day, as if it

signifies –

            while kids discard

imperatives and bounce

and splash, ignore the lines

and just get in the way.

My smartwatch measures

out my swim, and tingles

in my hands tell me my

time is almost done and

that the effort’s made.

I swim my distance,

but get out where

I got in and end a

journey nowhere.

The final stanza I first thought was too bleak, but then I thought that there was a truth in it.  In one sense it is absolutely and literally true, but it is the other senses that interest me.  When I re-read the poem I felt almost like an outsider reading the work of someone else.  I am still wondering if that is positive or negative or neither!