Chill Factor

Step outside today and,

penetrating like neuralgia, 

worsening by the year, 

the cold air brings to mind 

something far more chilling

than Arctic winds, 

or ice inside windows 

in the old house a lifetime ago.

A freezing mist hovers in the garden...

there were times when it carried plague

and beliefs were believed, 

like those that plague us today.

I watch synaptic sparrows surviving 

on seeds I have placed on their table.

With luck, they will live a little longer,

before quietly dying in secret, unmourned,

a happy death they never knew they'd have.

Ready to go at eighty, she said

she wanted to die, and again at ninety.

Lifeless as a rag doll at ninety-four,

slumped over the edge of her pillow,

she’d have come apart if I'd lifted her back.

Getting her way at last,

she recognised me before watching me leave,

the way we always see someone for the last time.

.