Bob Payne opened his door again

six years now elapsed,

looked older, nudging eighty

I guessed

oak and mahogany maintained

rugs respecting remembered silence

punctuated by a shouldering grandfather clock

spinning interior hours, days

weeks, years.

 

I had left his house before with

all surfaces polished.

Now I saw the rings that cups had left

a puppy's teethmarks at ankle height

 

that parrot still in its cage suspended

foraging the small space.

"They live to sixty" he said,

what would become of it I wondered

 

nothing had changed.

We exchanged pleasantries

he had suggested medication

for my nocturnal excessive urination before

an old concern lived through and survived.

His wife was still a churchwarden

(i'd remembered, he was impressed).

 

A hernia operation had left him with MRSA

he'd lost weight.

 

Light still gently entered in,

a garden cut a large swathe,

same bird feeders, strangely empty today.

 

"Turn right at Dovers Mead," he had said

I fretted over the A to Z

now it all came strangely back.

 

My mind turned its pages of time passed

grandchildren at university

house extensions built

relationships broken down,

overgrown banks of dementia

worries rising like islands

in boiling seas, lava settled.

 

Brambles threatened the hidden drive

nature had come back.

I left him to his paperwork

that    never seems to stop.