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1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 1998, 2014, 7*, afterlife, cancer, change, childhood, crane, death, distance, duty, family, father, history, identity, illness, letter, life, living, London, love, morning, Mum, Nan, prayer, reading, Saturday, son, speech, study, talking, time, walking, Woolwich
Mum was diagnosed with cancer in the early summer of 1998, she died the following March 1999; I couldn’t get up to London to see her regularly so I started a correspondence; sixteen years later I realise that our correspondence didn’t just stop with her death, the same as our life together didn’t: our life together was always the response between the words and events …
280698
Dear Mum
been feeling the need for a walk
and talk down to Woolwich and
around, through the history and
possibility of a Saturday morning,
arm in arm again, for many decades
now, but now there are only seconds
between all the thoughts and dramas
since you died (even, while you were
alive) where so much time has passed;
and Woolwich fades into building site
and cranes; all I could do then was listen
through letter, my life was too ‘detailed’
and 40 miles away, I said I could be there
in paper … now you are no miles away
and lost to all effect like cotton walls
we always had so much to talk about,
so many miles to cover – new routes
and ruins; new words and pasts – all
throughout the seventies, that the
eighties and nineties yawned us apart
in all our observation and resolve
until your illness made us embarrassed;
I had thought to shoulder my part of it
but the decades were against us and I
grew into the father I never had
I had paused to hear your resolve to fight
‘the Fighter was back!’ brave-facing things
down to their shame and dissipation, again
and again, through all the crush and
nullity, giving your sons their childhood,
giving Nan her family, the silent duty
offered matter over fact, ‘just one of
those things’, until you were fighting
for retirement, fighting to allow for
all of people in all of their array
fighting to walk around London, to
read and study each new stretch of reborn
morning; I include you in my thoughts
these days in the quiet moments between
successive acts of my plays and rites and
whether the religion is suspect or not
the prayers are from your son’s heart
we have lost all the time of a world
but there are still so many miles to cover
still now, much love, mark
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
part of the ongoing life and page of … Mum
childhood & speech & time wormhole: ‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’
crane wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
death wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
family wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
father wormhole: Sylvia
history wormhole: clouds
identity wormhole: I will eventually drift tectonic
life & love wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
living wormhole: ‘I come from the brow …’
London wormhole: my life is not your market
morning wormhole: the poppies / of van Gogh
Mum wormhole: someone called Frank
Nan wormhole: dream / 130207
reading wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
Saturday wormhole: Saturday
talking wormhole: connections
walking wormhole: there
Woolwich wormhole: the declensions of constant possibility throughout times
No words. Just love.
Peace.
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