Posted on by Glenn Mower

Work, rest and pray

It is a privilege to spend some of my time witnessing others movements towards health. Often it feels so much more than ‘going to work.’

 

Waiting for my client to arrive

 

Oil wet

Side street

Sweats

Rainbows.

 

Puddled

Rain

Poaches

Feathers.

 

Purple skies

Bleach

Seats

Lilac.

 

Air filled

Tumbler

Collecting

Time.

 

Cactus

Grey grit

Re-cycles

Jar.

 

Door jam

Opens

Hope filled

Rest.

 

Listening

When I listen

I dance within words

mine

yours.

 

Jumping

I bump into preconceived rhythms of disturbance and rhyme and yet

imperceptibly

we two tip-toe towards an expansion of time

Towards a place where

connections and oneness with sentence and sentience

force aside

my collator, my narrator, my personal promulgator, until presently,

Presciently,

We three clear the ground in readiness for the re-emergence

of Natural stillness

and Eternal love upon

breezes of ease and lightness within

Our shared

breath.

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Meeting my un-metered form

 

 

Mists hide your contours within my tired mind.

Big fists smoothed into soft crossed painter’s palms,  tenderised by formaldehyde and time long gone from indistinctly grey days of soul stoop carcassing, plumbing fingers in the frozenness of Barrett Homes, to solder on with septic chores for family woe that ripped your flesh down to the bone.

Pathetically, I edge away from the now and from late of you.

From the laying still, still laying there, a body sunk within the folds of your first and last light grey suit, avoiding the strangest taste and semblance upon half remembrance of lips too prominent and skin too old to.

Diagonally, upon one knee I squint upon the maleness of my ancestry.

On crow’s feet and disbelief I try to catch a breath, to reach beyond this, dis-ease-full-ness, to casket grip my way towards something even, as yet, cannot and will not be connected even unevenly to heaps of bones and sombre slips of workmanship within this cold un-metered room.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Upon visiting my dying dad

 

and as I try to catch

my breath my

strapping vigorous Father

hunches over His

hospital bed.

trying to thread the

crotchet blanket over

and over His toes to

offset the freeze from

metallic paint upon

His wired frame.

this current causing

such painful frustration

as body shreds

on pills like torpedoes. He’s

falling in panic He’s gripping

and slipping away from

‘This fucking blanket’

that spreads and travels

while cancers unravel and

spirits shard upon

this washed out N.H.S. wall.

taking the most of

the fullest float of

my weight

less

ness.

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Time to set my grief free

It is the time of year that my stomach starts to churn towards my dad.

260 miles and Nine years away from his bodily presence my thoughts intensify.

Ordinarily I think of him

during my daily chores

(his contributions to our house sinks deep into its very foundations)

during my ablutions

(while unknowingly filled with cancer of the spine, and bowels and internal organs he tried to put my mind at rest by saying that all he needed was ‘a big shit’ and after that ‘all will be fine, you just see son, hey?’)

but in a few weekends time it will be the anniversary of that visit, and already the tensions inside have begun to rise.

That visit.

That Essex trip and his unusual, early September request for us all to pick up the fallen apples in his tree filled side garden.

Remembering that vision of him standing half smiling, half not, patting his tummy and grimacing while watching us scrabble within the wet long grass.

Knowing now that it was indeed the  strange understated start of his 2 month decline towards a mid November death.

During those two months we were largely apart

( ‘but son there’s nowhere here for you to stay,’)

And I began three poems;

‘Loving until his last,’

(which started after a phone call while he was in hospital. Now removed from the blog for reasons of possible impact on others)

‘Upon visiting my dying dad,’

and

‘Meeting my un-metered form,’

(after spending time together while he was in an Essex Chapel of Rest).

With alarming slowness I guess all three are finally finished and ready to be set free…..but then again maybe not