Poem: Passageway

Passageway

Light filters through that old Victorian glass,

throwing colour on a worn brown rug. The hall

was always difficult to pass

cluttered with bikes, slippery with advertising mail,

unclaimed letters, and scattered boots.

Better to be out.

Boy back from school, quick hug for Mum

wrestle with the bike, then off out into the sun

to play with friends.

Past generations did the same, passed through

the old front door, with its chipped green paint, loose in the summer

sticking in the wet.

The hall contains it, all of it; anger and tears,

laughter and hate: the hesitation of one

that fears to go outside,

the slam of anger as a child is growing up

or as a marriage slowly falls apart;

has known it all,

the hall still stands, a hard shell for this tender, suffering folk

to live in all their lives. Live out their lives.

Way back, on the bed upstairs

a child was born,

through the soft red painful passageway, insistent pressure

squeezing him, yelling, into bright light from the window

slippery and wet

to grow, and learn, and live his work

come back fatigued, or grim, or satisfied

by turns

back to his own front door, unlock, step into the dark

warm passageway, park his bike

and call out, echoed by his wife.

He learned, in long slow ways, how to love life

and those he met, and shared his life

learned to be happy and be old

until at last, feet first, brittle, dry and stiff

his long, light box was shuffled down the hall

While he went, soaring, out into the Light.

(c) Richard Lawson

31/3/18

2m5s