Nothing Important - Richard Dawson

I am born by Caesarian section at 9: 30 AM

in Princess Mary’s Maternity Hospital

on the 24th May, sixty years ago today,

dangled by the ankle, smacked across the bum,

swaddled in a blanket howling like a wheel.

My big brother Iain on his tip-toes hisses 'I don’t like him'.

He’s Maradona, I’m Peter Beardsley, chasing a ball through the mud

followed by the kitchen window, bellowing through the fern:

'Boys!

Dinner’s ready!'

Dad is tuning in the telly beyond a heaving mountain of spaghetti hoops.

I am nothing

You are nothing

Nothing important

Death within a dream

Petrified on the back of a pedallo in the Balearic Sea off Alcudia

I can see the ghost of my uncle Derek waving to us from the beach,

gently drifting out of reach,

the telephone reciever swinging by its cord,

a glass of broken beer expanding on the lino.

My mam slips into the coffin

a polaroid of his sweetheart

Clutching Good-Luck Bear I peer gingerly over the side,

press my nose up to the tide,

and there behold a barracuda chewing on a chrysanthemum

and a family of clownfish hovering in the corpse’s hair.

In the scullery of the cub-hut my clarinet falls

into a sack of flour — a flurry of pins

squashed into the leather handle

a crescent moon of stricken fig-wasps.

Drizzling my fingers with The Magic Sponge

Dad says 'we'll probably have to chop them off'.

He collapses like a canvas tent on the floodlit astroturf

rent with a fibula guide-rod poking a hole through his shin

There are teardrops in his moustache

charging a flute of champagne

down the aisle and out for a throw-in

A St. John ambulance careers between the sugary pillars of the wedding cake

A crystal spoon

A pewter tankard

these words inscribed upon the base:

HAPPY RETIREMENT BEST GRANDDAD IN THE WORLD

A toby jug filled to the brim with curtain hooks

A sheepskin rug discoloured with tobacco smoke

within it’s braids concealed a rank

of plastic soldiers set to burst underfoot

Berwick in oils: a skiff on the swollen tweed

cradling a false pearl

a ceramic seraph

with an ashtray for a brain

— and I don’t care about these things

Why do they remain so clear while the faces of my loved ones disappear?

A Rington’s plate

a forking hairline seam of superglue through the Black Gate

a digital photoframe

frozen on an blurry orange thumb

I remember all these things

Old karate trophies

I am tethered by these things

Thimbles and pesatas

I remember all these things

A roll of Woolworth’s price stickers

I can see all these things but

where have all my people gone?

In the end it wasn’t meant to be.

He was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen.

He survived for seven days

before he slipped away