Two Poems by Rory Waterman

Air That Kills

Those better days, I’d test what you could remember:
Tell me about the time when… Off you’d go,
bounding over those sun-and-sepia-soaked
conquered hills. But today? You’d never know.

The days you said you’d been ‘thinking’, it was harder
to make you speak. What were you thinking? ‘Nothing’,
and maybe you didn’t remember, and maybe my guesses
equalled yours. But days you said you’d been thinking,

the dead and dying air rang in our ears.
I might hear your gut malfunction and sense it vent,
or the startled dotard next door shouting ‘OUT!’
then ‘OUT!’ through the walls – until the day that went.

Each day of no further symptoms might be the last,
and took you closer to it, but wasn’t unkind.
Less time to think is a nothing that isn’t worth nothing,
like not knowing what your body could do. Your mind.

Being Present

Not every night, but most, when I call,
and you haven’t remembered what we’ve talked about,
I go on loop to see the half-hour out:
So...did you listen to the footy? ‘No’ –
surprise in your voice – ‘no, somehow I forgot.’
What’s been on radio? What was dinner?
You never know the answers. Or the questions.
Or that you’ve known the things that keep you there.

But lacking heart, or having one, or both,
I keep to tiny talk – or tinier talk:
the sound of breath, yours chafing against mine,
until ‘I’m tired now, Son. Good night.’ Tomorrow,
Dad, we’ll do this again for the first time.
It won’t grow old. It won’t have even begun.

Rory Waterman is the author of three collections from Carcanet: Tonight the Summer's Over, which was a PBS Recommendation and was shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award; Sarajevo Roses, shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize; and Sweet Nothings. He teaches English at Nottingham Trent University. www.rorywaterman.com