The Queen Size Bed

“The Queen-Sized Bed”. © London F. Buss A queen-size bed was coming slowly, down the rough dirt track. As it drew closer, The wheels clumsily mounted on the base of each leg, rattled like a hospital gurney on the stones. The bed was being pushed slowly, ever so, carefully. By a weary old man in tattered clothes and worn-out shoes. as he drew closer, and closer, I saw that he was pushing his dying wife who was, lying in a dressing gown under the covers, in the Queen-Sized Bed. He pushed carefully trying not to shake the bed, excessively. His wife's head was supported by four pillows, she had wispy strings of silver white hair. She was dying. Several I.V. Bottles dangled off a hook, And dripped painkillers into her arm. She was awake but barely conscious, I wondered where they were going, but in my heart, I knew... privacy for an hour, I came back as the sun was setting. I found them together sitting on the bed, Looking over the ocean. The old man was holding his dying wife, in his arms… stroking her silver hair under the sparkling, southern cross. They were sharing her last sunset as, the dying embers of a fiery sun faded into the ocean. Night fell and I walked home alone, I had witnessed love real love, something I had never experienced, something I had never known. If you’re near Cowell and you look hard enough, You may just find the queen-size bed, with a tattered mattress and exposed springs, quietly rusting away outside a decrepit ruin of a barn. Take a closer look at the legs and you will find four rusting, gurney wheels. and if you approach quietly on a moonlit night, you will hear soft sobbing in the whistling wind, as it dreams of that dying sunset, under the southern cross... and the milky way lights up the sky, soaring into the heavens as the angels sing.