1451

On a roundabout near Galway

There's a dump for fairground rides,

A Ferris-wheel shorn of its seats,

A switch back thrown up by the tides.

But where are the crowds who squealed and shouted?

Where the candy floss and beer?

Where the children and the lovers

Clasping hands to share their fear?

Every happy moment passes

Every memory will fade

Every touch of human kindness

Will dissolve into the grave;

So why care if these abandoned

Rides are left to rot away;

Why concern ourselves with pleasures

Long since gone and had their day?

Do these rides so soon abandoned

Call to mind our fleeting lives,

The tiny sparks of love and gladness

Shining when nought else survives,

When even memory can't temper

Emptiness with thouhts of love

And life evolves in aimless circles,

Endless, as the skies above.

The Ferris wheel waits for the breakers

The Waltzers rust into the earth

Everything returns to dust

Until the moment of re-birth.

Brian Hick April 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 13.4.26

 1450

Passer meae puellae

I picked it up and hardly felt its weight,

A chaffinch, lying just outside the door.

Unmarked, its summer plumage bright and clean

Belied the dull eye and the open claw.

How long had it been flying from the South,

How many days against a wind-swept sea

Before, exhausted, it had chanced to fall,

Epiring, on the path in front of me?

Though sheltered by our garden, where the birds

From Gillsman's Wood have fresh seed every day,

There was no time to rebuild vital strength

And so his gentle spirit slipped away.

Yet his short life, like every other soul,

Was precious to the love which makes us whole.

Brian Hick April 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 11.4.26

 1436

Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,

Carry my willow coffin to the sea;

Build my pyre at the turning tide

To let the gentle flames set my soul free.

        Pour the oil and set the wine,

        Sprinkle salt and break the bread,

        Share the fruits that have been gathered;

        Do not mourn that I am dead.

As smoke drifts up towards the rising moon

The ashes settle and the sea is calm,

Let me melt away into the night

Until there is nothing for the dawn.

        Nothing save a memory

        The sum of all the hours passed

        A clutch of fading images

        Disappearing like the grass

For you will thrive though I have left this place

To generate the truth which we have known

Touching lives and healing all who come

To celebrate the love which was our own.

Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,

Carry my willow coffin to the sea;

Build my pyre at the turning tide

To let the gentle flames set my soul free.

Brian Hick March 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 9.3.26 

 1271

At a funeral

What am I doing here? No, don't laugh,

Although I wouldn't blame you if you did.

Ninety minutes on, I'm none the wiser

And all the endless verbiage could not rid

The doubts which bubble up and make me dread

The platitudes, the clichés and the Kant

Washing around this refuge for the dead

Where those who long ago abandoned thought

Of faith, of hope, of spiritual insight

Fall back into the stark familiar forms

Ignoring the beliefs which lead to life.

            You deserve much more and this limp praise

            Insults your memory and your loving ways.

Brian Hick May 2013

©copyright Sally Hick 14.5.25

 Fatality at St John's

Half an hour late at Tunbridge Wells

          Doors won't open, breaks are stuck

          And I feel I've run out of luck

Before I've reached the morning bell.

Coming home, via London Bridge

          'Severe delays' on platform five

          But I at least am still alive

And have no cause to fume or judge

While along the platform discontent

          Rumbles from commuters who

          Do not know what they can do

To get back home to deepest Kent.

Down at St Johns, by platform one

          A family's guilt, for they out live

          The tattered corpse which cannot give

Them answer, now that he is gone,

To all the questions, raging round

          From memories of ugly words,

          Slamming doors and jangling chords

Of arguments, like unhealed wounds.

The pain which he tried to avoid

          Has been passed back to those who cared

          Or could have done, had he been spared

But now can only sense the void.

I read of death on every page,

          And every day another war

          But single loss affects me more

Than genocide or tyrant's rage.

For we know loss is not the end

          And though I never knew his name

          His death goes through me just the same

As if he were my closest friend.

Brian Hick

©copyright Sally Hick 17.10.22

Monday Diary

Between me and the trees a swarm of gnats

Idle their time before the sun is gone.

 This time tomorrow, if the warmth survives,

Another cloud may wander into view

But not the same, for death comes all too soon

For gnats and mayflies, living on the wing.

My life, at sixty-four, is closing in

And even if I have another score

Or more, I know that every hour I live

Simply brings me closer to the point

When time, however I encompass it,

Will simply stop and I will cease to be.

          Death may worry some, as it grows near,

          But - snuffed out like a gnat - what's there to fear?

Brian Hick autumn 2009

©copyright Sally Hick 5.9.22

 Dining at Garsington

Selfishly, I hope that I die first

But if I ever have to live alone

Meals like this may help to compensate

For empty days of being on my own.

A little block of chocolate

Powder'd o'er

With cocoa

And I'm wearing

My cream suit.

Mad dogs and Englishmen

Dine in the rain at Garsington.

Brian Hick 23,6,09

©copyright Sally Hick 10.6.22

 I hear that microbes buried beneath the ice

For 20,000 years have been revived

And what should have been dead has been reversed

By gentle warmth, regardless of the price.

No hope for us, such complex entities,

To Frankenstein our forms with minds intact

When even sleep denies a conscious act

And memory is instantly snuffed out;

But yet if nothing conscious may survive

Bacteria and fire, perhaps I may

In infinite separation seek to play

Some part in the music of the spheres.

          What joy to think that somewhere there might be

          Something of beauty which once was part of me.

There is no last farewell for those who love

For though we may not see each other now

The love that bound us fast in life endures

For ever, deep as any furrow ploughed.

Brian Hick June 09

©copyright Sally Hick 10.6.22

 Drift

Until December he had seemed ok;

Aging yes, but mind alert and bright

Even if his conversation raced

Inevitably to Oxfam and a foray

Against RMH and his pension rights,

With letters of complaint - all double spaced.

Then, almost before we knew, he'd slipped away

Into a world where even when he spoke

It wasn't to us, or for us to hear.

He tapped out endless labels on his tray

Or sang songs from his childhood, which provoked

Quiet tears, though he was not aware.

I held his hand and hoped that he might know;

We spoke and hoped that he would understand,

But realised in those few moments when

He was himself, he had no memory

Of who was there or what was said to him.

And so it drifts, like childhood's rest returning

Where sleep and wake are equally untrue.

In hospital once more, linked to the drips

Which keep his body going, if not his mind,

He talks of trainig for the RAF,

Saying we've passed, but he is not yet fit

To be a pilot; then for a little time

Sleep flies him out, while we wait on, bereft.

Twenty years ago I thought I'd known

Something of him, andd had felt quite close.

Even if rarely seen, we seemed to share

Some sense that he and I, unspoken, had grown

To value who we were, but now the loose

Connective has been lost, and all I do is stare.

Down at the tight fit sheets upon his bed,

The pulsing drips and last week's wilting flowers,

Snatched conversations, nurses by the door,

Realising, as he turns his head

Towards the wall, no matter how many hours

I stay with him, I could not miss him more.

Brian Hick May 2009

©copyright Sally Hick May 2022 

Because we love

The sombre suites and quiet voices greet

The friends and family member we've not seen

For many years, and would not now have been

Together, but that he had died last week.

Gentle recollections of a man-

His endless jokes, his warmth, his quiet care-

Permeate the church, till I'm aware

That something has surpassed the grief, which can

Seem all pervasive, to overcome the tears

Which have been shed and will be shed again

For all who sit here, though we know not when

That day will come, in the ensuing years.

             For Love transcendent, close as hand in glove,

            Knows Grief only exists because we love. 

Brian Hick 28.11.08

©copyright S Hick December 2021

2 October 2008

When you read this I will be far away

Beyond the reach of any human kind

And all that was my body and my mind

Turned into ash or snugly bound in clay.

That part of me you knew is now dispersed

Into the quarks and protons that combined

So many years ago, till they refined

A human child, who grew upon the earth,

Who loved and laughed and lived until the day

When, as all creatures must, he stood before

The immutable and universal law

Of transformation, fusion and decay.

           But while memory survives among my friends,

           Your love and these words will never end.

Brian Hick October 2008

© copyright 2021 S Hick

 Thoughts of Home While Abroad

The wine is good, the food is better

              We sit out in the Square

              Privileged and civilised

With more than we could dare

Have dreamed of fifty years ago

              When holidaying here

              We scratched together our small change

For sandwiches and beer.

So why, when everything we have

              Enables us to roam

              Do we sit here disconsolate

And want to be back home?

Brian Hick

©copyright 2021 S Hick

No matter how

Good the music

More than thirty

Minutes on this 

Pew and I lose

The will to live.

Brian Hick

Leaving Toulouse

And so we're sitting here for the last time.

Two years' ago we sat on this same seat;

You drew the fountain while I tried to meet

Your skill and deftness in my bumbling rhyme.

If we were to die as we fly home

Then everything today would be a 'last'

And while I warm to melancholic thoughts

 Approaching death is more than just a vast

plunge into the void, for I must face

The hourly thought that time is running out

And actions planned are probable no more

With mind grown feebler and the bodies rout.

Goudouli ponders, but pigeons do not care;

They drink, fly off and melt into the air.

Brian Hick 2009

©copyright 2021 S Hick