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