angels

Hark

When hurt becomes song
Such deep beauty do we sing
That Angels listen 🎶

Truth sits in a shattered home,
one time shelter to Mum,
Dad and two small boys:
Angels on the pinhead of politics,
blown over by a wayward wind.

Truth doesn’t pontificate,
brought up over millennia
to speak retrospectively;
a bottled message fizzing at her feet.

As light fades,
those who read translucent eyes
turn inland, seeking lost pathways
through a sorry human space.

My grieving is baked
in your pretty fairy cakes
and sold for a pound.

Make me a coffee
and I will pretend to smile,
but this is hurting.

Those angels know me,
(we share a chocolate cake)
And, for now, are gone.

An angel spoke to me one night
when I sat in my youth
he told me I should be aware
of one unerring truth:

That like or not the time will come
when I will need a hand
to guide me through my daily life
– not quite what I had planned.

He bade me think, this angel fair
of loving volunteers
and low paid carers struggling
to tend my ageing years.

What will I want when I am old?
An elephant that rages
because we locked the cupboard door
and wouldn’t pay her wages?

Am I so sure I will not yearn
for love’s sustaining patience
when I am old and on my own
with similar relations?

Why do we lend so little heed
to those who hold our future?
For I’ll receive what I beget –
if I forget to nurture.

“So pay the carers what you will,”
the angel said, “be certain
that you will want the gentlest hand
to close your final curtain.