For eighteen months before
alzheimer’s shred his soul
I trapped my father’s voice
in the answering machine
Palimpsest of tobacco teak
lay over his Nottingham dialect,
did Robin Hood fire similar phonemes
into the deepest of oak?
The familiar sibilants which once read me into
other universes in the smallest of bedrooms,
so near; so far
Guttural grime of black coal evening
richer than the seams he mined
artillery assonance rattled inside trenches –
bayonet my very own lightsabre
Family trees sown and felled by the
language of attribution and final lullaby
which one heard, forever enmeshed in
the mist upon beacons and lighthouse
My father had dementia. I have written notes but no answering machine voice which would be really great. You’re lucky. You have some unique writing here. Glad I read this. Good one.
Thank you Tim. Yip, dementia & alzheimer’s show no mercy. brutal
I wasn’t expecting the pictures this painted with words. It was so vivid that I could feel those memories even though they weren’t my own.
Thank you Green for the kind words.
That’s a really moving and powerful piece. The way you capture your father’s voice and the layers of memory, from the “palimpsest of tobacco teak” to the echo of his working life, is just beautiful. It really makes you feel the weight of what’s been lost and the preciousness of that preserved memory.
Many thanks Roma. We lost our parents in the same week in separate Nursing Homes. Almost surreal.