Mayday, Mayday
Nirvana (for Jack)
Dying Slowly
Mayday, Mayday Beard of corn, sky-blue eye, sapling legs, boy’s smile, our handsome, foolish friend shot himself, locked in a shed, on such a morn as this, in the merry month of May. Round his shed the cowslips bloomed yellow as eggs for breakfast, bloomed the blue forget-me-nots, and stars of Bethlehem that doused their light at night to bloom afresh each dawn. The sun shone, that merry morn in May, the brighter to show him his failings, how short his shadow, how tall his debts. The birds sang to say his nest was smashed, his hen betrayed. The May green gushed as the bright day dawned on a fresh chance to fail. Lark dotting the sky-blue sky, woodpecker drilling an oak, lambs bleating, child sleeping, lime leaves dappling the roof, the day our handsome, foolish friend locked his door. Copyright © 2008 Fraser Harrison
Nirvana (for Jack) Playing snooker with my son is nirvana. Our club tarries in perpetual dusk, its carpet marshy with booze and fag ash, strange place to find the wheelʼs still hub, yet here, for me, with him, is a point of peace at the centre of strife. Wise old loser, Iʼm Steve Davis To his Ronnie OʼSullivan, bad boy of the baize. I despatch my balls as a king his captains on parlous voyages across a green sea to the top pocketʼs spicy harbour. He slams his shots, gangster-style, every ball a bullet. Machiavelli, I plot the pot after the pot after next and miss my easy red. He sinks the pink by mistake, demands to have the cue ball cleaned. Always happy when parodic, he commentates on my style in a famous wheezing whisper: ‛What a beautiful cueing action — pity he never pots a ball.ʼ He claims he canʼt perform without Dennis Taylor specs. The balls play their own game, deciding which of us will kiss the cup for the cameras. During our long hour of companionship, which trickles slow as a tricky pot along the fickle cushion, anxiety is debarred, thrown out to chew its nails at the club door. Snooker with my son is nirvana. Copyright © 2009 Fraser Harrison
Dying Slowly My father’s dying slowly. Aren’t we all? Too slow to skip pain, he hobbles, stick and stocking, to his grave. Can’t hurry Death: all in his own bad time. Rotting from its prostate, his root turned into Death’s tool; cell by cell, he’s inching into his corpse. Death lives, a lodger, in their house; watches telly with them, sits in the best chair, hogs the conversation, keeps my mother awake whetting his scythe, stone hissing on the blade, bleeding my father, drop by drop. At grave’s edge, feet dangling, he’s become a baby, fed and nursed by my, now his mother. He fears dying, not death; fears pain, not the night his cock-a-doodle-doo will never rouse. We’re not reconciled, father and son. I have my guilt, he his grievances. He can’t see beyond his own grave: no grief for my mother’s to come. He’s just dying to be friends with Death, hopes to wheedle him into killing kindly. Don’t we all? Copyright © 2009 Fraser Harrison