THE WATCH

A sestina:

   

THE WATCH

Slowly, surely, light from beyond the window
anoints a single figure standing still
beside a rumpled bed. This is the son.
White shirt. Black tie and suit. His face looks grave
and tired as he takes the watch his father
left him, sets the time again and starts winding.

He listens for the clicks and stands there, winding,
watching dust dance in the light from the window.
Memories dance into mind of his father:
crystal mornings when he himself was still
a small boy, looking upward, feeling grave
and waiting the words “pass me my watch, son”. 

Etched on the back, the legend “To Our Son”
is read like braille by tips of fingers, winding.
This message they had chosen to engrave
all those decades ago opens a window
on a birthday, a coming of age, still
witnessing “With Love from Mother and Father”. 

Grandmother chasing her chickens; grandfather
on sunlit days of cricket which grandsons
always won – palpable memories still –
or fireside afternoons with them unwinding
in high-winged chairs and, through the misted window,
the winter world as barren as the grave.

Their lives, as all lives, ended with the grave
but years ago they’d cheered along his father.
He was there in the train beside the window,
off to work, checking the time, their own son;
or returning home late to his wife, winding
home through countryside lying dark and still.

And now it is his own life that is still;
the family must gather by the grave.
A portly man is holding a watch, winding
the same spring, in the same way, as his father
had done each new morning for years: the son
tilting the scuff-marked face towards the window. 

The lightening window. The waiting grave.
The rich endowment from father to son
whose thoughts will not be still, who’s winding, winding.

    

© John Stevens 2011

This is the last of three poems this year about death – all very different. The others can be found by clicking on the tag ‘death’.