Edith Speers: Two Poems

These balloons are okay

The children were not at the funeral

but they knew their grand-dad was gone.

All the same

they raced and tumbled like puppies

and raided the trays of chocolate goodies

and cakes and pastry.

While grown-ups talked and

talked and talked,

they went on with their games and their play

until at the end of the day when the dark came,

their mothers and grandmothers

gathered them all together out on the quiet street

unusually crowded with parked cars,

all those family cars parked nose to tail,

and they were given balloons,

one each to hold by the string,

and each balloon they were told

would hold their special goodbye,

whatever they wanted to say,

whatever they thought of

during a moment of heads bowed,

eyes closed silence,

the balloons would take to grandpa.

So this they did.

Then all together, and all at once,

they opened their hands and watched,

and watched with wonder,

their messages rise up beyond the street lights,

beyond the power lines and even higher

heading for the spaces between the stars,

heading for heaven.

So let’s pretend

that not all rubbish is the same,

and not all balloons burst or deflate,

and drop back to earth again

to choke ducks

or create litter that never decays.

Carrying the prayers of children

let’s pretend

these balloons are okay.

Edith Speers

 

Nil by Mouth

Not just for a while but forever

to never swallow

because you might choke,

because of this thing called ALS,

this thing called Lou Gehrig’s disease,

this thing that is the inside-out of dementia,

this thing that kills your control

over nerves and muscles

but leaves your mind alive to endure it all.

 

Cheating is your only pleasure—

to bite and chew and chew and chew

and savour the treasure

of every drop of flavour but never swallow,

to wait until the wad in your mouth

is only fibre

or to swish a bit of wine

around and around your tongue and gums

but never follow through.

 

Never again will you feel

the gulp down your throat of the swallow.

It’s not allowed, not ever,

for a mouthful to go where it has always gone.

You can not follow life’s hallowed tradition.

You can not do what is natural.

You must go against millennia of evolution

and your own compelling inclination,

and instead,

 

from now until you’re dead,

you must spit out nutrition.

All of which is now supplied exclusively

by a murky solution

held up on a metal hook and stanchion

in a plastic bag with a plastic tube

that is surgically implanted into the hidden

curved receptacle

of the stomach

 

which is not just a hollow vessel but a muscle,

a flexing and chemical-oozing component

in a complex assembly line factory

of alimentary function,

an essential survival mechanism

like the urge to swallow,

not allowed

not any more

not ever.

Edith Speers