They will both stay here now until their end.
My proud Dad resigned to realities,
Balance gone – wheelchair bound.
My Mum lives in the warm mists of her brain.
‘I am not sure where we are’ she says, ‘but I love it here’.
‘I could have any of these men’ she tells my wife.
Today she is not sure who my wife is.
My Dad, ‘Jack’ all his life – never John,
Shares a room with a crazy shouting man called Jack,
So for ‘Administration Purposes’ he is now called John.
They have taken away his name.
In a small glass cabinet by his bedroom door, there is
A model truck and his sergeant’s stripes
His last identities with the world.
At the end of the corridor we sit quietly, looking over the lake.
His eyes, failing now, he points at a light on the top of a radio mast.
‘That is a fish eagles nest’ he says.
‘At dusk it takes off and catches fish from the lake’.
I hope that soon, he will take off
And soar above the lake
Catching fish in the bright moonlight.
© Jim Anderson, 2025
Jim Anderson 