Sheltered Accommodation

Behind the cheery blue rinse or the sour-faced veteran

lurks the silent ongoing tragedy of old age.

The dignified upright stance I so admired in my grandfather

he’d have traded in at once for the briefest taste of his limber youth.

He knew what we choose daily to ignore

and ached the terminal loneliness felt by no one but the old.

I will always want to cry when I see him, arm frozen above,

waving us goodbye. From the car I willed the wall

of the communion room not to blank him out this time,

willed the road to carry us back to him, still standing,

arm aloft, cured suddenly of the worst disease.

Because he had helped relieve my own disease,

and lifted me with his trilbied, besuited arrival:

solid brogues clumping up the alleyway to stay. Tacitly,

we both knew how important were these freedom-days,

revelled in time that danced in all directions –

needed to know how much of it remained.

A little even then I recognised the seriousness

of having our company, and felt a fraction of his loss.

Always squirming with the need to express the unspeakable,

Yearning to join the unlinkable, milky eyes with all those years

Of sun inside fixed hard at key and lock. But we had gone.