'More Snow on the Way' - Monochrome after Geoff Kersey, copyright Bob Nunn, http://bob.nunn.art.googlepages.com/

Ash Wednesday 2009

Tan Mackay

“Remember, O Man, that dust thou art,
and to dust thou shalt return.”

Words will always haunt me; not merely those,
Though each year they assert themselves;
But others, just there, unsuspected,
Waiting, as I turn the page;
Harbingers of the inevitable,
The dark, dour, often-pitiless
impairments of age.
“…the merciless decline of all living things..
The incessant passing of time,”
Those words, in ambush, strike home,
Stark reminders, that alert me to the fall
Of leaves; to flowers as they die, colour dulled,
leaving their shadows all in monochrome.

Ash grazed my forehead, as I looked for light,
while darkness closed around me.
No promise of presence, only absence now.
Hollow weariness, smothering struggled thought,
gropes its way to something other than today.
Recollection rarely fulfils the promises of life,
While memory’s greatest gifts are costly-bought.
I conjure tender ghosts, half-welcome, that,
Unspeaking, stir in turn a tenderness in me,
Though they rise, dry, from a battered box of wood,
Once weighted with festive fruits,
crystal-sweet, that ceded their space to images of grey;
the near-redundant echoes of all I thought was good.
It’s all dust then, though I wonder what it meant;
The purpose of it; a deity’s intent?
It hardly matters now, perhaps, as the mind declines,
Closing its avenues and filling in its mines;
But if there’s no way out, then forward’s the only way;
And I must walk it, step by step, with heavy feet of clay.

---

The Churchyard Cat

Tan Mackay

I caught a flicker of ginger fur,
Smouldering, quiet, beside the hedge;
Half-hidden by headstones and an ancient rose,
Where ginger paws pillowed ginger nose.
I turned away, to place a flower
On a tranquil grave, in a quietened hour;
Both death and burial long-since past;
With loss avowed, grief renounced its power.

Soft pressure – the red cat’s head to my thigh,
As I knelt, quite still, in the wettened grass;
Light feathering of whiskers exploring my arm
Brought silken thought and a velvet calm.
My hand, unseeing, reached to stir
My fingers deep in the kindly fur,
But respect demanded I wait to be asked
By the ritual stretch, the inviting purr.

I murmured a blessing – a thankful Te Deum,
The cat, hearing all, gave his own in return,
By flumping down on his side, then his back,
In tummy-up trust, waiving risk of attack.
Plum-plump, his body substantial and lithe;
His eyes half-closed, his signals were blithe.
He wriggled. Then, accepting the stroking hand,
He lay still, though his tail twitched, tense and alive.

Suddenly he rolled over in one fluid move;
He’d given his gift; now he padded away
To a mounded grave, where he sat to restore
His ruffled coat and lick his paw.
With the wetted paw, he washed his face,
Each move he made confirming his grace.
I watched as he rounded the churchyard wall,
Retracing his route at unhurried pace.

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