Creative Writer Ink Photo

Lung Days

Illness crowding your last days
frail skin that awful dullled
grey and you sleeping, lights still on

I dabbed your forehead with your favourite essence:
vanilla, organic, fresh, buoyant,
eased back your hair and you sitrred,

the faintest of smiles, breathed
a deep thick rattle. I held your hand
like a chicken's foot you'd once said

and we'd laughed, let your humour carry us
tidal, willed ebbing towards that other shore.
I want to tell you now, I've gone back

Those old places, rocks, stones, somewhere circles
lain by the water's edge, let the wind carry my cries
remembered how you'd talk, head to one side

the camel cigarettes, unfiltered, the way you'd lived, died
pulled off the oxygen mask, let go, ebbed.

Keith mac Fhigheadair

Trailing Words

As I grew up I watched my father slowly disappear into grief and silence, the type of work he did - mostly shift work - upset his nervous system and added to what would now be described as post traumatic disorder incurred through internment by the Japanese in China during the War. I resolved not to get caught working in jobs that were dulling and monotonous, not to be trapped into work routines that took over life.

I spent many years being busy 'doing' being rather than allowing myself to be.

This blog I want to meander like a trail, not a straight line or a straight road, as moments between moments, in-dwellings. Maybe it won't be that. I hope it's fun and fun to read and that it honours the heart and honours the Earth.