Notes from the fold-up bed

On being old and frail,

And at death’s elbow,

And greeting the clock face

With its welcome news

That the deep sleep one,

Has left behind, has

Hours to run in blissful

Lack of care. Pulling the

Bed clothes up for comfort

Head and face now in oblivion

From softness into softness, an unimagined gift,

For age is no hard guarantee that – eyes closed –

What follows is the dark that shuts away the strains

Of living to decreptitude.

 

One hopes for certainties of a childhood bed,

And that yet unknown adult responsibilities

Stay far away and, perhaps, may never come.

That we may burble and soon help is close at hand.

 

There’s more to come, but not, alas, from me.

I was transfixed and felt th’old devil’s urge

To catch the trope; to write, as is my tendency,

I needed wakefulness and soft must wait another day