Inch By Inch
After his scalpel summer,
with the wheelchair butting Edwardian doorways
and my mother’s light-hearted exhaustion,
my father built a nest against pain
around his red armchair:
Elmore Leonards stacked
by the evening whisky glass,
popped foil weeks shed
across the cabled floor,
my son’s get well card,
its dyspraxic, zimmer inches.
Julian Flanagan heads for the patio to write poems, then remembers he’s given up smoking. They have been published in Ambit, Envoi, Iota and co; and his journalism in The FT, Time Out, economist.com and here www.julianflanagan.com