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Geoffrey Holloway

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Last Days

Waking early is everything:
to catch the burr of the dawn blackbird
that sings as if half asleep
- as if it doesn’t want to disturb others -

then down to a small breakfast,
out in the greenhouse to vet tomatoes,
check the netting over the strawberry patch,
feel apples firming on his tree.

Later perhaps he’ll clip the hedge,
take some bubbly greatneice to school,
do a bit of painting, change a fuse -
anything that’s about, that needs an eye, hand.

And afternoons, fettle the bowling green
- with a spruce scurrying wagtail for mate
shave it like a royal barber, never
a cocky blade given the slightest quarter.

While evenings are for sauntering the village
in a scent of pipe smoke and wallflowers,
dropping in for a pint and a rap of dominoes,
an easy, knowing joke round the table . . .

or watching snooker, reminiscing -
the green baize a field of youth
where lads fresh from memory’s pockets
ran it, that cushioned, Edwardian world.

Affairs of state no longer impinge -
this or that politician’s yap
is of less moment than the neighbour’s kitten
that likes to stow away under parked cars.

To be absorbed, comfortably unnoticed,
that long ambition’s achieved now -
lingering out his last days,
waiting for life to forget him.

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