Age Rage

 

I was wandering through the Nursing Home

In the town of Morton Rise,

Seeking an old and weathered face

That I’d known in another guise,

For Richard Spratt was my father’s friend

That I hadn’t seen for years,

I was going to let him know his friend

Had taken a turn for the worse.

 

The eyes that stared from the armchairs there

Were blank, and devoid of pain,

They’d taken the pills that dulled them down

So they wouldn’t be restrained,

The nurses treated them all as fools

This gross humanity,

Whose only sin was they’d given in

To age, and infirmity.

 

It was all so very depressing, I

Imagined my future there,

Staring in immobility

From the prison of one of their chairs,

Waiting my turn to be spoon-fed

By a very impatient nurse,

Who shovelled the food all over my chin

As I sat, and inwardly cursed.

 

I wandered the home there, room by room

In search of his friendly face,

This Richard Spratt in a cricketer’s hat

I remembered from Ambergate,

He’d batted a decent fifty, while

My father polished the ball,

And took five wickets alone that day

In his bowling, over all.

 

It was nigh on forty years before

That I’d watched them play as a child,

Out on the green at Ambergate

With the weather, warm and mild,

But the years dismay as they pass away

And my father grew so old,

Now he lay in bed in a kind of dread

As the bell of his lifetime tolled.

 

I said that I’d find his friend for him

And let him know, at the last,

That he was remembered, thick and thin

For a friendship, forged in the past,

There were days when they both had sunny skies

And met each day with a grin,

But time drew shrouds like storm-filled clouds

And the end was looking grim.

 

I heard a shout from a private room

And went to investigate,

Quite a commotion in the gloom,

I hoped I wasn’t too late,

And there was a nurse stood over him

In a wheelchair, Richard Spratt,

He’d thrown his meds all over the room

And sat in his cricketer’s hat.

 

‘You know what to do with your pills, you witch,’

He shouted, and turned to see

Just who was stood in the doorway, I

Was grinning from ear to ear,

‘Well I’ll be… You can get out of here!’

He said to the wayward nurse,

Who said, ‘If you’re going to be like that…’

And left the room, with a curse.

 

I told the news of my father then

And I swear, he sat and cried,

Just a couple of tears escaped

That he hid, he still had pride,

‘Life is a trail of sorrow, son,

But we’re all on the same long train,

Your dad and I in the tunnel, while

Your carriage is still on the plain.’

 

 ‘What do you value of life the most?’

 I saw the pain in his eyes,

‘Youth was that great and precious thing

That with age, you realise!

I’d give it all for an hour to spend

In the glow of my lady’s eyes,

The touch of her skin and a hint of sin

But the thing that we love, it dies!’

 

‘I’ve often thought of those balmy days

On the green in our cricket whites,

And think I hear the crack of the ball

On the willow of sweet delight,

I remember your father’s terse ‘Howzat!’

When he scattered another’s bails,

Now I sit in this prisoning wheelchair, here

And all I can hear are wails.’

 

‘Wails from the ones who want to die,

Wails that they want to live,

The future is lost to the best of us

We have but the past to give.

You’d like to know how I feel right now,

Like a leopard, caught in a cage,

If only I could be young once more…

But all that I feel is rage!’

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Tate Morgan]

Beyond the pale .This piece touched a cord unlike any other.It made me think on the grandfather subdued by diabetes. He once dropped a man for cutting in front of him in a race.then stomped his wind pipe for good measure.I remembered him as the one who threw a bale of straw over the top of the barn. Oh how this felt to read.Time waits on no man,.In the end we are but shadows of the greatness that once was.The light that burns twice as bright ,Lasts half as long!

[Mark]

I feel like this when I visit my father. He was a brilliant man who could teach himself anything he set his mind to. Now he has to be medicated to keep him from strangling other patients and groping female interns. Great sentiment told by a master craftsman.

[Tate Morgan]

that is so telling lol cool I hope I am just as bad when i get there lol

[Mark]

LOL I was thinking the same thing after I read what I wrote... but my Father would be appalled by his actions if he were in his right mind.

[Clayton Bardwell]

"You’d like to know how I feel right now,
Like a leopard, caught in a cage,
If only I could be young once more…
But all that I feel is rage!’"

Everyday I rage against the light. The light they say is at the end of the tunnel. They haven't yet made the man that can put me in that cage.

[Marie]

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light...do ot go gentle into that good night..."
I Love that quote. And Mr. Paget's poem says it all.

[David Scott]

You write fresh in each piece. Not predictable in what you will say, only familiar in the way you say it. Your signature is in everything I have read so far. (I realize that is not much yet). The last Verse... VOLUMES

[Patricia B. Hepler]

Excellent topic, excellent arrangement and excellent point of view... especially poignant ending..
~pat