For Mike. It would have been your 67th Birthday on 17 November.

The Blackbird Sings

Every 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.

Pain killers 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 learnt 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.

© Anne Chappel