The SOS call from an unknown cousin,
the frail bird bones you had become,
lost in the hospital bed,
the fierce blazing plea a shock
as our eyes met.
I knew you instantly, knew you to your soul,
felt your pain and also knew straight away
that you were dying.
You were Dad’s cousin, another generation,
Too old to matter as I was growing up, and yet
closest to Great Aunt Belle,
the dragon lady I would love to meet again,
now that I have the wit to listen.
You were the ultimate grey man, desk jockey, civil servant,
yet there were whisperings of traffic
from the massive secret bank of computers,
the possibility that all was not as it seemed.
And as I finally got to know you,
poised on the edge of the abyss,
I find that you would have been my favourite McNicol.
Proud, warlike, formidable, lord of your isles,
You too sought silence and solitude,
to leave the world behind and follow the wind up to the high ridges.
You too loved the story that the rocks tell,
the myths of their beginnings and
the journey from the centre of the earth.
Some stories have only one ending
Ours was a brief moment in your time not mine,
All I could do was ease your passing
And mourn for another relative stranger.
****************
The blast from the past that breezed into clinic,
Sporting a lump, there for some months,
Suspicious and needing removing.
Several new tragedies had affected your circle of
friends that used to be mine.
Fear of cancer eroding your equipoise,
the denial plain in your eyes.
To cut out the lump might involve a ballectomy,
even in our darkest moments
I would never have wished that on you….
How I feared for you those anxious weeks
The eventual operation less radical,
The weird histology positive relief,
This story may have many more endings.
****************
Pinned high alone amongst giants
The satellite phone died first.
The community bitched with baited breath
But the winter vault didn’t relent.
The champions of old went out to do battle
so the clan might escape unscathed-
in the same way you took on our dreams,
majestic peaks, climbed in the deftest style,
treading lightly on the high places,
leaving no sign of your passing.
You wore riches beyond measure, of sky and precipice,
you plumbed the depths of your own desperate hell,
dug into your soul and there perhaps you found peace.
Your story only ever had one ending.
Copyright Fran McNicol 2009
