Poem - There had been a man in this bath

There had been a man in this bath

It measured the volume of you when you were gone,

red smears above red smears, broad water lines

like rock and crystal strata,

what came before and after. The picture

caught a calm pool where before there was

the spider of your four limbs flailing out, four carers arms

pushed in searching for control in the maelstrom of

water as if all we felt we needed was a stillness and

not a chaotic sprawl of a situation, clarifying, defining

creating actors, witnesses, narrators, disbelievers. 

I watched your spasms building shaking you free of your core. 

And the water out of control, elusive, lying to us.

I wanted to spring you from this calamity, not record

your curious black eyes darting at every shocking new

crush, your bashed frame twisted, twisted more,

knotted you, split you eventually snapping your power,

a shower of red sparks stained the white of your eyes.

Somewhere deep a thud in the pit of your stomach, 

a dropped weight opened emergency doors, emitted 

your red-brown juices into the foamy water from which you tried

to rise but then bombed when your heart finally gave out

and so did ours, in part.  We lifted you we raised you up

gargantuan wet dead spider of a man on to the rubber sheet. 

The two of us, professionally, spoke, of how

we would hold your absence and recall the clicks and suck, 

the tick of your mouth. The rhythm of your to and fro.

We washed you, more carefully than I would have thought,

and you were taken. Left, I took photographs I wrote

evidence. Now you are back there in the crumbling shale 

remains of the bath, in the thin layers of fissile memory. 

Your spring of life, rasp of your breath, breeze of your voice; 

your shy softways glance of eyes. 

James Bullion 28th March 2013