The Reunion (In Memory, PM)

Time to go
Someone is waiting
Time to drift away from this creaking hospital bed
With its curtained air of closure
And its gaudy swirl of potions
Someone has been waiting:
Not long, but too long
Time to meet again
Time to do some catching up

And the present starts to fade
With its drips, its drugs, its careworn hands, its glass of shaking water
And the present floats away and the past fades in to oust it
And a camera oscura on a windy city cliff
Pans to fill the space
With a swirling reel of memory-pictures, infinitely linked:

Sparrow-bright in a slavery port
(High-heels clicking gamely up a hill to get back home)
An ancient school, webbed in ivy
(A new life's threshold's glimpse in a world of crumbling stone)
A painting on a chimney breast
(Locking in the memory of the bathing light of Italy)
One more decade crossed off
(Putting on the Ritz at a birthday celebration)
A litmus pointer to the year to come
(The brightening of a hydrangea through the remains of last year's fading)
Welcomes offered and returned
(Good friends, good company, hospitality)

A fleeting wheel of pictures:
All to say goodbye to
For now they swirl away again
And now the past gets choked off
As the future grows impatient
And things get fogged
And things go black
And things begin to clear again
And things are now revealed:
A smiling face, two outstretched arms
And a simple line to cross
Time to go
Someone is waiting