RED KITE SEEN FROM SICK BED ! 

   

  

In his dreams, he could do things. 

In his dreams, he assumed 

he would still be able to do those things 

when awake. Car lights traversing the ceiling 

soundlessly until extinguished. 

       

 

Trouble is, he had gone 

from sixty-three to ninety-three 

in about six weeks 

without that customary 

thirty-year adjustment time.

    

  

Daffodil, snowdrop, crocus, hellebore. 

And other small signs. 

In this circumstance, happy and sad 

are not so easy to tell apart. 

    

update

 

Caught sight of myself in the mirror this morning. Because I have been feeling the cold so much this winter, I’m usually wearing plenty of layers: thermal T-shirt, jumper, fleece, and maybe a dressing gown too. We have only a small shaving mirror in the bathroom. I’d noticed how my face was changing: skin sunken, bone more prominent, neck loose. An uncharacteristic pallor, more recently replaced by a distinct yellow tinge as jaundice is evidently setting in. I had been aware of my weight loss, in terms of numbers, from the bathroom scales. But then, unexpectedly, this morning, shirtless, in the larger mirror upstairs. Jesus! I’m an absolute fucking skeleton! I was profoundly shocked by the sight of myself. Ambushed. Like something out of The Walking Dead, is the most apt allusion I can draw. Things are really getting serious now. My decline has been so swift. Right up until Christmas, I was still a working gardener, even if I had slowed down considerably. But I was still active, able to do things, walk the dog, run errands. Now, I can’t remember when I last went out of the house, even into the garden. So much for being an outdoors guy, eh? Everything is going. Everything. Not even sure I’ll make as far as our son’s 21st birthday at the end of next month, to be honest.

    

  

As the sun moves round, the swaying web under the table fades from view. 

       

  

[more bad days and nights, utterly grim]

    

  

Eventually, sitting upright, not awake but not quite asleep, 

he watches morphine dreams on the inside of his eyelids 

    

 

[another batch of brutal days]

intense nausea, relentless sickness, drinking & eating nothing, dramatic weight loss, exhaustion

housebound for a week, bed bound for a day and more

  

He woke suddenly, just after twelve, thinking, What ever did happen to Spudulike?

  

  

Another last. Such thoughts occur randomly throughout the day. 

The list of things that he now realises that he has done or seen for the last time 

without knowing at the time, grows.

for example, Southwold, last August: 

He will not be able to swim in the sea again

Indeed, he may never even see the sea again 

      

  

He might have wished for, say, another fifteen years, to enjoy being the person he had finally become. 

Right now, the summer seems an impossible distance away. 

    

 

Welcome the snowdrops, small, 

the winter jasmine, pale…

But those aconites, that yellow! 

    

  

Slips his fleece off over his head, the dark sparks and crackles 

    

  

From his sick bed, the crescent moon, shivering uncontrollably 

   

  

[a few really rough days]

   

  

We drive around so that I can call in on the first few of my customers. Others to see on 

other days, most of whom I have known for many years. Their gardens. 

And in some cases their families. I want to tell them in person that I can no longer work. 

It’s early February, so there’s time for them to make other arrangements. 

Afterwards, we stop off at the park. Between the three of us, eight legs need a stretch. 

dog wets 

the foot of 

a pylon 

    

  

Listens to the mechanism, 

watches the the pendulum. 

In his sister’s new home 

the grandfather clock their 

grandfather made. 

    

  

Today I turned down chemo. Decision made. It could only ever have been palliative, never curative. 

And no other treatment options are available, so I guess that makes my cancer status officially terminal. 

End stage. But I’ll keep plodding on for as long as I can, of course. 

    

  

Changes in procedure since he was last at the dentist, two years ago, before the Great Insanity. 

Gaps where the niceties, common courtesies used to be. 

Also missing, those calming posters thumbtacked to the surgery ceiling. Palm trees growing 

out of tropical island sand. White cliffs. Coastal erosion at its most photogenic. 

How to explain to the dentist, who is a) wearing a mask, and b) Spanish, why there may be 

little point in us making another appointment for six months hence. 

How to strike the right tone?