The Care

The Care

Carers are fifteen years younger

than you. They stop in for your boy,

they shower your mother not looking,

they unpeg and bring in the laundry.

Carers have learned the bad-smelling

jobs, and soak them as they chat.

Brown pivot stains shame a veteran—

Old age is eventually a cat

which starts on the brain of its prey

so the words come with a delay

and finally hardly at all.

Children, years younger again

always knew the nuance of the words,

the scratchy pants, and the Latin.

Grown ups twist as the modern

approaches down gravel, down the flight-plan,

the airy and the arch,

the judgemental in starch

ampoule-filled as their hatches open.

More friends of mine now face that one

so glory to Nurse Cavell, to Nurse Kenny,

Doctor Flynn, and the sans-frontiersmen:

I brace for my turn of white cotton

and my headstone POET SO FAR then.

Les Murray