He knew that he would die tomorrow,
this old man.
Placated by a park bench of his own, which
kissed his arse, and
left its teeth marks along his paltry thigh;
allowed wind through slats
to pluck his meager coat;
and blow his temper eastward
to the dunes and grey driftwood,
the tumbled slagheap of his recollection.

He stared at couples who passed by
as an amnesiac might search out for his name.
Their folded hands and inward gaze;
their slow aching and raptured limbs.
And spring time,
when their clench grew tighter,
like they clung, winded,
to a tilted earth,
he might shove them shouting
oaths,
and race between the breach;
as a child off Brighton pier might leap
into the oncurling crush of waves,
hoping to split one in two.

And drunks who lined the benches by the path,
like ragged pigeons perched on a memorial,
became the limbs
and teeth of his self-loathing.
These figures who befriended him;
punished his back with gentle touches,
and listed their litany of offence:
their bad choices
and failed attempts;
who kept breathing between
their ever-gulping desire to cease.

He knew the following day would be his last
as he knew he’d run out of numbers
to count with;
the yards of disappointment,
the acres of lacking…

But the how of it:
the stopped breath
or opened vein;
the tired rib which digs inward,
or wearied blood that
ends its wrestling insistence;
and joins
corpuscle to corpuscle -
as children on a corner might join hands
and then quit;
deciding not to cross;
though the traffic slows its pace
with expectation,
grinds slowly to a halt.
And stops.

---

His last breath flows.

---

The first year of his demise, he
went unnoticed -
though he stayed there on the bench;
a gargoyle staring back or
modern sculpture.
His clenched jaw -
wrote one critic -
a very dull lambaste at social malaise;
the anatomy, morose in its unenviable accuracy -
etcetera, etcetera . . .

Children leapt across his knees
and tripped.

Tourists held their cameras at arm’s length.

His drunk friends did not find him
overly-changed;
though argued amongst themselves,
in a whisper.

And pigeons, at a last resort,
would perch on his shoulders,
and
pluck the bread crumbs
blown against his cheeks;
made concave and sallow from Autumn.

The winter creaked his bones
with ice and sludge, until
a snow bank had its hold around his legs,
like a supplicant before a throne;
and slowly,
swallowed him.

*              *              *

At thaw-time,
with the crackle of old bark,
a dustman with a sack heaved what was left
into his cart;
a mess of rags and chipped bone,
of mud and scratchings.

Someone scrubbed the stained bench -
the freeze-dried aura of his rot
replaced by
the paler stench of bleach.

The council wondered at the loss
of their new acquisition.

And in his flat, still left unkempt,
the phone rings.

Some bill he left unpaid,
desires him.

copyright,  © 2006 Moby Pomerance