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| My late older brother, in his younger days, with his beloved Riley car |
prompt, which I thought I'd ignore
until I went back to some poetry notes
from my Hebden Bridge class and
found the Hurakami one we'd been
given by our tutor and poet, Sally Baker.
Here is the first stanza:
THE STORM
“When
you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.”
Haruki
Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
While
his chest is becoming railway maps of love
I
collect booklets of knowledge and information
adding
to what I already know and keep
re-arranging
what I know. He knows
what
is coming. We all know about bones
and flesh, and the time they take...
The Riley shown in the picture has a vivid memory for me. He drove me from Yorkshire down to Brighton, where he was then living. It took eight hours, the weather wasn't very warm and there was no heating in this car. But we were young, and it was fun!
The poem, however, does not relate to this episode, but to the time when he was diagnosed with terminal mesothelioma, a cancer brought on by asbestos exposure.
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