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The Care

Carers are fifteen years younger
than you. They stop in for your boy,
they shower your mother not looking,
they unpeg and bring in the laundry.

Carers have learned the bad-smelling
jobs, and soak them as they chat.
Brown pivot stains shame a veteran - -
Old age is eventually a cat

which starts on the brain of its prey
so the words come with a delay
and finally hardly at all.
Children, years younger again

always knew the nuance of the words,
the scratchy pants, and the Latin.
Grown ups twist as the modern
Approaches down gravel, down the flight-plan,

the airy and the arch,
the judgemental in starch
ampoule-filled as their hatches open.
More friends of mine now face that one

So glory to Nurse Cavell, the Nurse Kenny,
Doctor Flynn, and the sans-frontiersmen:
I brace for my turn of white cotton
and my headstone POET SO FAR then.