Posted in Passages

Vertices

Posted on by tq1695

Age: past, present and future
12 years a long time when someone is 13,
the other 25,
more so when the other’s father is 52.
I’m not sure the three ever met – before
they could have,
a father and son might encounter a schoolyard,
or out of uniform pupil.
Perhaps they did, probably didn’t
but that did all meet – sort of : once
circumstances knocked.

Son called on his father early one Sunday
never knew why – had been just the day before
finding him in bed,
he didn’t bother with any shaking,
or CPR – he just knew.
The doctor signed the certificate and called the undertaker –
the former pupil, who gave instructions to his teacher
just the two of them and the third
aged 48, 60 and 87
the years of no significance.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.