Three Poems for Jane

3. What's Left

Responding to your mother's voice
you pulled your tongue in, forced a smile
but couldn't will your way towards
a road still climbing mile on mile

and so we left for what life's left,
with no salute or shot or shout
to mark the unrecognised frontier
from World-With-You to World-Without:

without the set of mouth and chin
defiantly alive and blue,
the mobile hands and smile and shrug
that wouldn't let it get to you

or play the willing victim's game;
you held your cards close, hid your fears,
sarcastic, vulnerable and brave,
for twice your allocated years.

The operation failed at last
and while we power ahead, you spin
spreadeagled on the black of space,
an astronaut whose lifeline's gone.

Because I couldn't hold the thought
that all those hopes and fears were dead,
I made a virtual life-support
and carried you inside my head

through sodden February hills
down ways your wheelchair's never been;
I pointed you to where through sticks
buds pushed their blind way, moist and green;

but near a huge decaying church
across the concrete underpass
where lorries groaned through neon dusk,
I felt you settle into place

in your familiar territory
of muddy, fingermarked belief,
to which I turned in sceptic prayer,
incontinent with unshed grief

as when unsteady fingers move
the drip-tray brimming from the fridge;
each jog or stumble starts a wave
that slops across the shallow edge.

-------------------------

© Brian Fewster,
Published in Envoi 123, 1999

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