Posted on 5 October, 2023

Sleep well, David

Today is National Poetry Day. While the piece below may not qualify as such, is raw both technically and emotionally, I think it comes from the right place. It was written nearly forty years ago, a dream and a memory.

 

Sleep Well, David

 

Last night near home
I met an old friend
A distant relative
Not seen in a while
Though once we’d take a beer
On Boxing Day each year

 

I was hitch-hiking
To congratulate
A mutual cousin
On publication
Of a cookery/poetry book
But I stopped
To chat with my namesake
Almost perfectly
Of an age with me.

 

We spoke not of the past
Of boyhood birthday parties
Of pantomimes, cinemas
For a shadow lay there
More recent
Of broken marriages
Two year back
Cerebral embolism
I thought had killed him

 

He looked much shrunken
Shorter now than I
With glasses too
Unbalanced
One lens much thicker
Than the other
And pale
Yet seemed happy.
He showed me a new bride
Even I could see his pride
A little blonde girl
They’d bought a house
For fourteen thousand five
Short of money sure
He asked her if they’d better not
Have waited
Did she regret
She squeezed his arm
No.

 

He was not too interested
In our new family poet
Understandably
On this his wedding day.
Would I see his home?
Why not, my family too
We went by bus
To our Fenland
A village I didn’t know
Nor how to get
To where I had to go.

 

A creaky gate
We entered
A flat square field
Where nothing grew but weeds
No house
On the four acres
Just a double bed
Spread over a single
Six-foot ditch
The bride tucked in
Looked now as if
Yes she might be thinking twice
Her side at least was level
Not over the uncomfortable rut
Where her man would lay

 

My mum, my gran, like his
Berated him
Fourteen five
Sight unseen
For bare land
Then frantic to help
Began to weed, to hoe
He had his life ahead
Had to make something
Of the mess

 

I would have helped
Wanted to
But with my trousers
Creased and pressed
I wasn’t dressed
For landwork.
He smiled at me,
Wanly
Nothing more to say
Or see

 

I woke
My wife’s hand moved away
But she was there
How glad I was
To be alive still
Was something
Something, two years more at least
Than David had
My cousin
I met last night.