remains.

only two weeks ago lifting him out of bed propping him in the wheel chair pushing him into the foyer smelling of pine-o-cleen to watch the setting sun. today i push a trolley over the same floor the trolley which is marked admin for pharmacy use only, only i use it to push the 3 black garbags of his final belongings out to the car. the new slippers we opened up with a stanley knife because we couldn’t squeeze in his fluid-engorged ankles. the lollies he never finished. clothing to be buried in opshops somewhere in adelaide’s

southern suburbs.         or perhaps           cremated.

This poem was begun two weeks after the death of my dad (Jack Wallace Walker 1924- 2009.)

It took some years to get it right, so it didn’t appear in either of my collections tropeland or Original Clichés in 2015 and 2016. It was eventually published in the 2016 Australian Poetry Members Anthology published earlier this year.

HERE for an audio version I mixed with Gurdonark’s sensitive music and HERE is another performed and produced by Urmymuse.