Winding Up
I was left
the watch your father left to you
with
instructions to wind daily.
A person that
I hardly knew,
just sepia
memories aged four
of hospital
beds near London Bridge,
starchy
sheets, ceramic bedpans, dressings on sores,
candlewicks
of tar tinted threads,
bound tight
across cast ironed beds.
Hushed, vacuum
flasked antiseptic wards
occupied by
elderly men who coughed and snored.
I wonder if I
then grasped his hand?
If so, there is
in memory no brass band,
no conductor
grandstanding the bandstand,
just his
watch held in my hand.
Opening the
fragile cardboard carton revealed
nothing
spectacular or intense.
no gold,
myrrh or frankincense,
but some
mossy coloured cotton wool
nicotine
stained by time’s passing.
Matchwood
sharpened to a toothpick point
lay by the
silvered watch; tarnished and brassing,
dented,
chipped-faced, soiled, begrimed;
now end-stopped,
stuck fast in a wrong time.
At five to
twelve.
An obstinate
metal puzzle refusing to move
or yield to
pulling, twisting, shaking, force,
so not to
risk breaking the already broken watch,
I laid it
aside in guilted remorse.
As directed,
I later wound it anyway,
knowing it
would always be wrong
in its soundless,
pointed, ticking song.
Day upon day,
keeping senseless time so well,
the second
hand kissing the minutes farewell,
the hours
minuetting the days soon gone,
the years
that pass in decades bent on.
A cunning
faced fox that gazed and mocked,
pig-headed,
stubborn in its dog-eared box,
Rolling and
fingering it in my palm,
the stained
silver begins to warm.
In shadowed,
opaque reflections, did I spy
a man who
comforted the boy who cries?
Perhaps a
kindly, gruff reassuring grin
scoffing at
monsters made of tin,
looming onward
through blackened white static
brushing
dread cobwebs from a young mind’s attic.
Drenched
linseed hands, honing wood with elbow,
underarm tossing red leather at willow,
then cordite
and shot, blood feathered gun belt,
table
mannered lectures and wisdom dealt:
Words made of
rolled steel blades.
Absent for
months then abruptly present,
not witness
to days of growing dissent.
Summarily
dispensing political views
without
compromise: hefting the news;
the wasting
world unwillingly shouldered.
Now here’s a
curried forehead:
thin papered
with hair,
steaming -
either from rage or despair
at the latest
trick; some ill mannered youth
who never
would succeed in grasping life’s truth.
Parting company with crumbling planet,
fast bound for
mountains of gravel and granite,
scornful,
reclusive, impatient of fools,
grinding teeth
in the earth with primal tools,
smashing the
axe-head with hefted hammer,
flamethrowers,
drills; the chainsaw’s harsh stammer,
striding up
summits, tearing down walls.
and the past
is a country you refuse to recall.
You carved
your initials into Albion’s soil.
You broke
your back with truthful toil.
Yet never
quite forgetting: a fire that smoldered.
“Don’t tell
them I’m a farmer,” you once commanded,
as I set sail
for out of mind and out of sight.
Well maybe
you were right.
But did it
really matter,
the former or
the latter?
In the end,
the watch is stuck, age has struck
and England
all out for another duck.
The maturing
years may make us kinder
and all that
we lose becomes a reminder
of why we
should have held fast in the first place.
She hard
pinched my flesh in the crematorium
and passed
the watch in memoriam.
And here it
lies.
Made the trip
to the desert,
halfway
across the world:
a smooth
pebble caressed between finger and thumb
to rest in
antiquated peace till kingdom come,
alongside its
matchstick companion,
like father,
like son.
And it is
funny how connections are made
as we silent
gaze:
bequeathed,
these two bedfellows.
No doubt I
heard your voice: you didn’t think,
the music in your
head made your brain shrink
and you’ve
had far too much to drink.
But it was
suddenly patently clear.
Taking the
chiseled wood so delicate
and slight
probing the innards so intricate,
the hands
moved, the penny dropped,
and now it
sits beneath the clock.
Reconciled,
keeping time. Well, still, perhaps
one outruns
the other - until they overlap.
I was left
the watch your father left to you
and though it
had little in the way of splendor,
I will daily wind
it. And I will remember.
