He is afraid. Always.
I don’t know if he knows
the always. He knows
the sometimes,
the worst, the most
immediate. He knows
he has no-one but himself
to bring himself up. Not me –
not often enough, no blood
connection, and old
like grandmother, though I try
mothering, in my blunt
and sometimes cranky
way (when I’m most alarmed).
19 already and nowhere
to go, still nowhere
for escape.
[Poem #78]
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
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