Magic Lantern

The strangest night of my life?

Let me flick though

the magic lantern of my mind.

 

Of course there were the nights of illness.

Night walls moved in and out,

then opened to reveal,

a curtain of mouths,

whispering.

Or

that night when pain

reached its crescendo,

and night was all there was.

My fluttering life moving

toward a mental flame.

Strange then, but now familiar,

and no doubt will come again.

 

Then there were the strange nights of vigil.

That rogue teenage year,

fizzing with religious fervour.

I sat in the church in candle light,

old women drifting in bowed homage,

the scent of incense and smoke,

trying touch an ancient time.

Or

that last night

of my mother’s life.

She lay

in that incongruous bed,

the same pictures on the wall:

Light of the World,

Bluebell Woods,

Black Madonna,

that had stood sentinel during

customary evening admonishments,

and now watched over her, with me,

leaning forward,

to catch the voiceless,

laboured breathing,

not diminished but

amplified, in her final hours.

These strange nights and I

nod in recognition.

 

Then the nights of oddly dangerous meetings.

We sat up all night chain smoking,

neither of us daring to sleep

in a stranger’s company.

Or

that night in a garage.

He wound a string of beads

tight and tighter round my neck

and what had to be done.

At least not the last of strange,

or any other sort of nights.

Too commonplace I fear.

 

The strange nights of adventure.

Stranded in the land

of the infamous volcano

spouting ash and

knocking routines out of diaries.

Or

that strange night

spent sat up in bed

a tiny new person

in my charge,

the old me gone forever.

Strange to me, but not unique.

 

The strange night is only so

during the ticking of its brief hours.

In recollection,

Strange, becomes

simply

more of our past.