Monday 22nd July - Visiting my Aunt

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Visiting My Aunt

 

Like a faded chintz

The colours bleached and altered through the years
 
The pattern faint and wandering here and there,
 
Pale in the bright light of the sun, threadbare in the breeze
 
She sits and waits.

 

 

A lifetime

Of living richly, or falteringly,  through the years
 
In different places, with different people, here and there,
 
Floats through her mind, trickles past her fading eyes

She sits, so still.

 

 

 We draw closer

She looks up, a gentle a smile erases all the years

And as we talk, of this and that, here and there

Youth returns, awakening her memory, her face,

She comes alive.

 

 

We visited my Aunt earlier this week. When we got there, she was sitting by herself in the shade of an umbrella in the garden of the care home, not asleep, not awake, just there.

As she saw us come over, it was like a transformation from anyone into someone - reminding me of the scene near the beginning of "The Wizard of Oz" when it goes from  black-and-white into colour.

We chatted for a little while in the garden, and then went out for lunch at a nearby pub. My father and aunt talked of things in the past, and things in the present, catching up on the huge changes in their lives  over this year. 

This poem started "brewing" from that moment when we first saw her. I'll probably end up tinkering with it again from time to time. It's really hard to leave it alone; I'm still fishing for the right words here and there.