Last Moment

CARRY ON TUESDAY

The phrase in blue is the closing sentence of the 1950 film The Glass Menagerie .


LAST MOMENT
(A very personal memory from forty years ago)

You would expect a final memory

To be intensely personal;

After all,

Four years,

Thousands of miles,

And a great deal of romance and affection,

Had come before.

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As it is with many relationships,

It had faded,

Dulled,

Become routine.

Though neither of us had admitted it.

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Now he was returning to Africa.

We stood on a grey London platform.

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And he said 'I'll be back, you know'.

And I said 'I'll still be here'.

And we were both half-lying,

Hoping we were speaking the truth,

Knowing we were not.

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The whistle blew,

The train pulled out.

He waved from a window.

*

But, almost immediately,

The line curved.

He was lost to sight.

All that was left was a departing train,

Growing ever smaller.

I waved to something

Impersonal.

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And that is how I remember them,

All those years,

All those emotions,

Letters,

Phone-calls,

Protestations,

Tears!

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Whenever I think of him

The departing train is my first thought.

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It was utterly impersonal.

Yet it was utterly sad.

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GONE FOR EVER

So many feelings,

Inspired by one memory.

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A gate opening on to a quiet road;

So quiet

That we looked up, startled,

When a car went by.

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Distant views of grassland,

Sometimes a glorious green,

Sometimes the dry colour of corn

And, once,

The grey of extreme drought.

*

Here and there, cows,

And the sound of distant mooing.

A sheep

To crop the garden grass.

Geese

To protect,

Or to be protected from!

Hens laying eggs.

A baby kangaroo

To nurture.

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Along the road a little way

Horses,

Coming up to the fence to be fed.

An exciting excursion for a little boy.

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Heat.

But not the humidity of the coast.

A dry, scented heat.

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The treasured memories

Of a citified Grandmother

Whose family

Lived in the country.

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Thinking back to

Once Upon a Time.

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What do I feel?
Sadness?
Pleasure?
Nostalgia?
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All of that.

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PS

 

Not 11,000, but 22,000 turned up to help clean Brisbane! Many had to be turned-away! I'm one of those silly people who gets teary at the happy, not the sad. And I'm teary now.

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