This bed is the bed of dreams, they all start
from this bed, a white hole swallowing
the collapsing star. They pulverise memory,
compound my tenses in a nightmare play.
This bed flies over the realities of day,
it ignores the world's exploding cries,
bedsides of sighs, of soft expiries,
the molten craters of birth.
This bed and me, we hovercraft,
we swish our skirts across
too numerous, too predictable agonies.
And you think I should care for them?
Even this bed sobs, gutters groan with tears,
the world a flash flood, cars elbowing bridges.
And tomorrow will bear down heavier,
will bend the earth's back.
We lie in wait for it, watching the sky,
never knowing what we must muddle through,
this night's throw of the diazepam dice.
As if, this bed and me, we were life's burden.
And down below us, sufferers making moan,
I hope you will sleep, every last one,
quiet and deep as the many dead,
with never a swift or little owl to wake you.

My room's at the end of the wing in the unit,
hers indeterminate, its window to the east.
Easy to move from here to the imagined there
of this postcard, from TV's clapping-happy hymn
through the wall, as deaf as any gospel choir
to argument, move to where she bends,
ink almost dry on her last word. That sideways light,
the chequerboard tiles, and hung behind her table
the dusky painting, its darkening oils.
The blackened frame bisects her world
between the fixed old dispensation
and shifting new, where paint is not quite dry,
anything could move, the dark fold in a skirt,
that cambric sleeve, a delicate lace cap.
The darkness is my hide, the sun out there
catches its fiery breath. My lines on screen
thicken and thin in crystal mist, carers change shifts
and busy in with medication, cups of tea, snatch glances
at summer through the glass, talk of a lottery win.
Pale wraiths of women lift the infant Moses,
Pharaoh's daughter, handmaidens, his deceiving mother.
There is the beginning of something,
a shiver in the gauze curtain, shadow of air,
the pale geometries of the window glass,
the maid at the still centre, arms crossed,
her gaze subdued, whatever stirs out there.
The light telling the hours. The woman writes,
her shoulders angled to the task.
One sheet of paper, all that is required.
Send for a new Vermeer to catch the silence,
the little window's light, my laptop's
scratched dull metal, the cheap pine desk,
the frame of the wheelchair, the carer beside me.
Watch as the distant leaves change bright for dim,
shadows relax on lawns, walkers on the unseen path
go home. Nothing amazes like the garden we have lost,
the naked baby before us, the severity of each moment,
errors folded, unfolded. The words not sent, not spoken.

I am making a hymn,
a praise song for this body,
which floats inert
down from my brain.
I want to thank it, this shivering blancmange,
this paralysed jellyfish, for all it has done
these past seventy years.
It has given my mouth so many meals,
it has shifted me over many miles,
it has made love for me, run itself out of breath,
it has undergone surgeries to keep me alive.
I cannot put a number on all its services.
Now it trembles at each whim
of the tide, alert to all sensation,
but has lost its sting.
Only my voice can shock you, electrify.
So I am helpless, but still
a trifle dangerous.

You get a sense of what it's like to lie
alone and in the earth, set to decay.
The regulars will visit hallowed ground,
a few old friends include you in their rounds
from time to time, but most will let you rot,
forgetting they already have forgot.
Of course we can't know that for certain sure,
but some were coming and have missed the door,
while others phoned or emailed, sent a card
and, duty done, went shopping or abroad.
A few more didn't ask or realise
you'd disappeared from view. Whatever lies
beyond horizons can't be their concern,
they live for what's in range, don't seem to learn
what lurks outside their urn-shaped biscuit box
where sweets compacted lie, day's paradox:
it's not all-things, though beautiful and bright,
inevitably swallowed up by night.
Well, I might rattle on like this some time,
preferring home-grown groans to the sublime
of poetry, art, music, friendship, love.
Fact is, out there or, my conceit, above,
are many folk who care for me, who worry
about, pray for, want to help, will scurry
over if I call and ask. They'd lift me if they could
out of the grave, at least out of the mud
I have to blunder through just now. They can't
and that's the sod of what is most sincerely meant
but does not work, which makes me curse and blame
my well-wishers, for whom I'd do the same
if our roles were reversed, me up, them down.
Send them a card or flowers, a Get Well Soon.

for Libby at seven weeks old

I met this new-born under April sun
where the year's days lengthen,
stretch limbs to the warmth.
She a few hours short of seven weeks,
me few days short of seventy years.
For her everything is new,
she is new herself,
every face, every voice
fits to her understanding,
each tissue of response.
And here I lie, my old thinking,
we have seen and heard all there is.
Then her mother, my daughter,
lays her against my shoulder.
And warm against my cheek
her breathing slows
and eyes drift down to sleep.