Journey

(I)
Feeling for you
In that demeaning bed
Lost and bedbound
Amongst starch and screens
Clumsy with compassion
Hauling you into worlds
Of nonsense and music
The teenagers’ allies
Bathing your bewilderment
With recipes from home
Swabs of daylight
On raw evening eyes












(II)
Befriending
Black humour bleeding
Curving round kidney bowls
Dry-eyed
Along yearning corridors
Prowling the prison
Past wardens white shoes
Scaling and scanning
The triplicate paper peaks
Of breath and skin













(III)
Your hands long
And pale now
Clasping and running
Against the moon
Of the mercury clockface
Patient to patient
Child to Parent
Falling at the last
In the skin-searing echo
Of your last dreaming breath

(IV)
Now
Ten years later
Rescuing you
From scratchy ink
On yellowed as skin
Foolscap folly
Pocketing close
That softened impermanence
Of indelible soul