Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

There was that evening he discovered the meaning of life.
It was pouring with rain, I'd missed the train,
and I came home from college, dripping into the living room
just in time to catch the last moments of a conversation.
She was on the edge of her seat, dropjawed,
while he knelt before her, telling her this theory
that had come to him that afternoon as he'd sat alone
by the three bar heater, reading the books she'd said
were putting ideas into his head, drinking the whisky
that only a few nights before she'd tried to wrestle from his grip
and pour down the kitchen sink. I mean,
he didn't consider himself a drunk,
because he never drank at work, nor in bed,
and not much before noon on Sundays or his days off.
But he'd had his moments of sleepwalking and falling over,
of arguments, hangovers where he looked like death,
shouting, crying, talking crap and worse.
She had to put up with every bit of it -
I don't mean violence, only emotional torture,
his withdrawal from everything except booze.
I could always disappear into my bedroom like the teenager I was,
but she couldn't run. She was bound to him
by loyalty, love, a history of feelings,
an understanding defying logic.

Although she could always deal with most of it,
laughing or shrugging, talking or working it off,
she still had to listen to it, trying her best to work out
where she'd gone wrong, where he was coming from,
sometimes resigned, sometimes eager to learn,
often giving him her own glass of wine
rather than let him feel the agony of running out.
He was an alcoholic for at least five years
before he would use the word about himself.
It was about then he started to get better; that evening maybe.

I'll never forget his long Marks & Sparks arms
waving in front of him, and his face aglow
with this discovery in a bottle of Bells and something by Jung.
As for the meaning of life, I don't think any of us caught it:
I think it was just his way, in letting her be the first and last
to hear it, of telling her how much he loved her.
And when I looked closer, she wasn't so much on the edge of her seat
as inching kitchenwards off the sofa,
diplomatically trying to stop the spuds from boiling over.