Falling, falling, falling

in slow motion,

but still too fast

for the pace of my heart

 

You up there,

– pinned against the sky while I die –

recede heavenward, your presence thinning

my life unwinds before me, from the end to the beginning

 

Out of the clouds you come

in blue gloves and visor

space-walk figure with apron

– a stranger, but still familiar –

the unruly shock of hair that I gifted,

you cut short to tame

one eyebrow lifted

as you greet me, you say your name –

as if I could forget, my dear

as I try to pull the elastic from your ear –

let me see your smile,

let it marry once again your lullaby voice –

just for a while – understand we don’t have long –

we don’t have a choice –

there may be time for just one song

 

In these end-days that melt into moments

you slip from my grasp

‘Where are your brothers and sisters?’ I want to ask

‘Why are you wearing that infernal mask?’

 

I am falling and you stand watching,

hope dying in your eyes

though they try to hide

Mine become shy:

turn aside

to the speeding cliff-face pocked

with veins of rock

smudged with lichen,

study their contours with urgent fascination

while your eyes fill

with acid drops of consternation

 

There’s no going back, is there my child?

Once the fence has been jumped

no escaping the call of the wild-

-ness whipping the waves to the rocky shore

rushing to meet me with a roar

nor the hole in the fabric of time-space through which

I am to pass, at long blessed last

to a place into which you cannot follow

until, perhaps, we meet in a new tomorrow

 

Sing me a lullaby of times long gone

give me the courage not to grasp

at the tufts of grass as I pass

at the rising cliff and the falling air

at the herring gull call of distant despair

 

Yet…

let me hold you once, even if it’s the last

gasp of love before we part

to walk together in a different art,

in a different way –

the veils between us thinner than they were yesterday:

though then we seemed to meet, I found it hard to let you in

now we share the same heart-spell

though we have not the gift of the touch of skin

 

Dear one,

forgive me my flight:

my mind was bedazzled by the lure of the light

in which, beloved of me, those who have passed

came into sight

 

Broken was I by the sickness of body

which wormed through the layers of my un-composted worry

to devour the bright, brilliant brain

of your mother, as dementia digested her pain

and wove into stories its tortuous ways,

now this way she sways,

now that,

now she laughs and she plays with the remnants

of fact

 

You were brave and distant,

my capable daughter – chip off the old block

giving no quarter

to vulnerability

but I, you know, I can see

the covert face of your agony

 

Don’t forget me.

 

I am not this shadow of me

nor the one who said she wanted to live under a tree

I am none of the things you thought I was

Nor did really know who my daughter was

Do not mourn the time never spent,

nor the moments we lost to connect – never regret

Don’t cling to the handsome young woman

who held you so fast

yet cast you so far

Remember nothing you cling to

will ever outlast

the march of time

which now trickles by

as you fade away and I fall from the sky

 

I see you now framed in blue and in white, fringed with green,

leaning over the cliff-edge, gazing down as I flee –

helpless as a flightless bird – in the clutches of death

who bears me with delicate fingers: an egg to a new nest

 

I held you once, and that was enough

you gazed up at me with eyes raw with love

Fear not (though we do)

and do not despair

when this body meets the pebbles

I will not be there

let it be but a cloak

returning to the earth

you step back from the edge till your time comes for

rebirth.

​

Razia Aziz

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This poem was originally published in Covert Literary Magazine: Edition 3, Summer 2023 | DIGITAL Version.  If you enjoyed this we would appreciate you buying the magazine to read other writings from other contributors.  You can buy the digital version here or if you prefer a print version can be purchased here.

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