Kim Moore
Writer in Residence
Extraordinary Lives
If your father ever falters –
his body undoing itself
for unknown reasons
a porter may put
his hand on your shoulder
and bring you back
from the edge of panic
or a nurse will sing
as she holds his hand
and her voice is clear water
in the restaurant,
seeing something lost
in your eyes, a waitress
will take your sadness
and keep it safe whilst you eat
they are not saints or heroes
or angels without wings
just ordinary people
doing extraordinary things
Last Offices
And so we began
to think differently
of death
when it was common as a song
as close to us as a shadow
as insistent as applause
each time it visited the ward
it altered everything
in a wind of its own making
made all our well-known rituals disappear
and so in the absence of ritual
we made our own
knowing there was nobody now
to unzip the body bags
no embalming to raise up
the beloved to the surface once again
and so we became obsessed
by what happened after
our last offices
after the cleaning-washing-drying
we dressed them
as if they were our fathers or our mothers
our sons and daughters
sisters, brothers
lipstick for a woman whose make-up
was always perfect
and for the man
whose wife wanted him to smell
only of himself – a dab of aftershave
behind each ear
and in the soft place of the throat
a Man United shirt for the football fan
we sat and held a hand
waited for a last breath
for that was our job
we dressed them
in the mind’s eye
in the heart
in a memory of a memory