Learning to Swim
    ‘you will swim without a cork’
    Horace, Satires, Book 1.4.120

Forty years ago
I wore orange blow up bands,
in your sepia arms
– a barnacle babe.

Thirty-five years ago
Agnostic Sunday swims
in eighties council chlorine,
– that must have stung.

Twenty-five years ago
Buoyant on beach bubbles,
snorkelling in the shoaling sea,
– jumping crests and jetsam.

Five years ago
You floated in the bath foam,
your flannelled face and mind,
– hiding your ebbing light.

Today
I think of you as I swim,
our green eyes stripped of tear film,
– as my head goes under.



Seven Ways of Looking at Dementia

I

Blindly in denial.

II

Straight in the eye
speaking
calmly
slowly
using only short
simple
sentences.

III

As a list maker
     –sit down for socks
     –don’t pay the milkman
     –press the green button
     –eat Magnums
     –lock the door.

IV

Through the bottom of your brandy glass.

V

Like a puppeteer performing an end of season run on a vulnerable Victorian pleasure pier

VI

As a wake.
A living decade
(under vigilant watch).

VII

As the shuffle ...