" title="Painted, spoken Raymond Friel
The Walking Stick
‘He needs a walking stick,’ announced my mother,
more carer than wife, or wife-to-the-end -
this the first trip since the vascular storms
swept through his brain, leaving him witless
(turning a book in his hand like a stone).
Around Shearwater, we held him between us -
slack-jawed, startled, straining for sanctuary,
like an elder driven from his own home.
He railed against her mahogany gift.
Not this! an old fire in his drained blue eyes.
On the day, it was left without a word.
In front of me at the station, craning
to make sense of the times, for the first time
in half a century, he took her hand.
Page(s) 16
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