The Long Good Bye

PART ONE You tap me on the shoulder and ask whose staff I'm on, Startled I try to tell you but see that you have gone Down the path of memory to a place of no-recall Where I'll no longer find you and you won't see me at all: Only a booted stranger you've never met before And a blur of marching soldiers, Marching into war. I set the cup down slowly, the broth i've made for you, I draw the curtains slowly to hide those scenes from view, But in the mirror darkly that stands beside your bed Your gaze picks out the shadows of the men that you once lead. You turn to me in wonder and ask where they have gone, I tell you they are marching, On down to Avignon. I know not what I'm saying, I blurt platitudes and lies, I want to stop your memories before they turn to cries Of dying men and horses, exploding mortar shells, The mud and blood of warfare, that very special hell Of living in the trenches when you were twenty-five And saw your generation Half crucified alive. PART 2 Slowly the darkness thickens, you turn to me blind eyes That see beyond our seeing however much one tries To shield you from the knowledge that all your friends are gone, And you ask me if your sisters and your mother still live on. I tell you they are doing quite well in Kentish Town And hope to see you shortly When you yourself go down. In truth they died tomorrow or thirty years ago, It makes no sense or difference to what you need to know, Why tell you they have followed those soldiers you once lead, What purpose can it serve now confessing they are dead? I do not want you grieving every time I speak. When you yourself are leaving I neither ask nor seek. And so the days continue and sometimes we are friends, And sometimes you're a burden, a charge that never ends, Till looking back in anguish to how things used to be, I see again the father who meant the world to me. And so I stoop and kiss you and gently take the cup From the gnarled and twisting fingers Of the man who grew me up. For my father who fought in two world wars and died of Alzheimers in 1986 Copyright © Carrick Townsend | Year Posted 2020