Monday 7 October 2013


How are we to remember?
The silence roars in every space
The cold
The abandoned relics of civilisation passed
The desert where the bloated corn ripened once
The river bed with bones where the spawned shoals wove their dance.

How are we to continue?
Our actions of our own bidding
The ease
The silence beckons but does not insist
The empty rooms collecting the unheeded light
The darkness of evening spreading into walled-in night.

How are we to love?
The distance has stretched the tendrils
The gaps
The goodbyes at train stations
The visits at the heavy points of the year
The tiny call from dots on the other side of the world.

How are we to settle?
The need has drained dry
The edge
The home waiting vast
The fridge stocked against an invasion
The beds sleeping undisturbed for a season.

How are we to grow old?
Anno domini is relentless
The clock
The lines creep ever deeper
The children approach their middle years
The body leans a little to the wind and tears.

How are we to be remembered?
The house was made a home
The days
The smell of bread
The piano and the clock ticking
The summer cat and the winter garden.  

How the family lives on
In the closeness of years
The blood
The additional loves
The new beginnings and growth
The long shared kinship of the precessing now.



Colin Morgan  

9 comments:

  1. The smell of bread
    The piano and the clock ticking
    The summer cat and the winter garden...love how you bring scent in with the bread... in all the becoming and decaying we live on, build homes, raise kids, let them fly.. and time is our friend and our foe sometimes... somehow makes me think of that apple tree quote by martin luther...you know... i'm an apple tree planter in the face of a world going down..i don't care..i just plant...smiles

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  2. i like the progression of this through the questions...i think we wrestle with these in different parts of life....for me amidst everything else the questions stand out as they mark our progress through life...

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  3. Yes, this is how it works for me... thank you, Brian.

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  4. A beautiful reflection of the passing of time & memories we hold dear ~ The questions and answer format worked well ~ I specially like the part of growing old and the last stanza of the family ~

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  5. A powerful and beautiful poem !

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  6. Very interesting questions and even more interesting answers. The distillation os quite wonderful here-- I especailly like the dots on the other side of the world--I envisage maps--and so many images of home--very well done. This is Karin at Manicddaily on wordpress. (using an iPad that refers to an old blogger blog.)

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