The Blackbird Sings
For my brother, Mike, who died in 2011
This evening a blackbird sings in the valley below.
I cannot fault his song
nor his determination to be heard,
so deeply sweet, yet sharp in the air.
Finally, it came down to this: a sterile room.
Not the place you would choose for final conversations
a slim hard bed with a view of brick walls and dirty windows
where one small green tree climbed a corner nook.
A limited view, not even clouds passing,
nor bird song, only a series
of cheery ladies with other plans for the evening.
A framed print of a fading magnolia,
or you said, was it two naked ladies?
We laughed till you told me that the wall
had turned red.
Painkillers had side effects.
What horrors await us?
Are there already
lurking under the skin,
or calling us down the long white corridors
to meet us shuffling round the corner
with vacant unsmiling eyes,
shapeless, shape-changing.
We wanted more time
to grow older, grow wiser in some way
possible, but not yet known.
The blackbird has learned his song
from those before.
The memory of others
and a long line of perfecting
and living, not dying
in that moment of release
into the still air beyond brick walls.
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