The Cut-out
I try and imagine the irregular space he will leave,
the awkwardness of it. Will it have boundaries,
soft-boiled edges to compromise if you’re not too careful,
like stranger-bumping in a Tesco’s chiller aisle?
Stolen from unconcerned history and devoid of value,
I could take this abstract replica in all its coarse dimensions,
and prop it totteringly where he would have stood
to see if he still seems at home in ‘The Oak’, the bookmakers,
the empty chair in the lethargic hospital waiting room.
It would be a validation of sorts.
I try and imagine the untrammelled space I will leave,
fluid and deep-sea’d, of tidal form and substance.
Yet perhaps that’s not how others revisit us
preferring to recall the solid and distinctly tangible
to be rebuked, or stroked, or prodded, or loved.
If you could take this insubstantial past-promise of me,
might you explore the feelings of those few, to see
if their contact with my roughly chiselled words
and hand-sewn pin-bled phrases touched them at all?
It could be a validation of sorts.
Ian Gouge - Writer 