Wanting You + Charles Henry’s Children + Forest Fire (Photo)

Back to Cohen’s notebook and the line ‘right to the end I wanted you’

Wanting You

Right to the end I wanted you
To the end of our long hallways
To the end of sinister rooms
In our flat with that garden view

Right to this end I wanted you
To the end of the garden path
To the end of our loving road
Where our rent arrears are still due

And even then I wanted you
At the end of a greener field
At the end of arching rainbows
In a skyblue sky of light blue

Never gave up on wanting you
At the end of the ozone
At the beginning of dark space
A pilots light his lunar view

Looking back to earth to see you
At the end a miniscule dot
At the beginning so much more
Than diamonds in the morning dew

Right at the start I wanted you
Right at the end I want you too

Richard Downes
12^th December 2020
(From the Unburnt Flames Series)

Growing Poetry’s advent calendar 2019 Day 8 Prompt: Write about someone you miss dearly this festive season. See how abstract you can go!

Charles Henry’s Children

They dig
These grave diggers
Chipping at frozen ground
In winter of discontentment
They dig

At soil
Awaiting you
Your bodys internment
Now that your life is all used up
Wasted

Sugar
In cups of tea
And Woodbine cigarettes
Rotted your heart from the inside
Brave heart

Henry
In the desert
Dodging Rommel’s great tanks
Biting the sand and gritting teeth
Head down

Later
A married man
With three little children
Wanting turns on your knobbly knee
Riding

Riding
The long black hearse
Just a few miles up the road
To the church fill of young ones tears
Falling

Dying
Each in their turn
First the thrifty sister
Brothers outlive separation
Parted

Festive
The season ain’t
Dark nights clouding christmas
More than crackers at dinner time
Madness

Stuffing
No sage turkeys
These distant survivors
Of Charles Henry’s broken bloodline
Alive

Alive
And not merry
No to happy new years
Maybe to this resolution
Yes, yes

Richard Downes
12th December 2020
(From the Unburnt Flames series)