Modern Portraits
Away from the light
In the middle of the night
I recalled the sight
That had given us a fright
on our golden wedding anniversary weekend
of two young men who were lying
on their backs in bright sunlight
with their shirts pulled up
and two paramedics attempting
to bring them back to life
one pressing a chest rhythmically
the other applying an oxygen mask.
These men on the pavement slabs
near the edge of the kerb, where traffic
blindly passed where nothing
must interrupt its flow, looked to be
at peace with the world so utterly
laid back, relaxed, feet apart, with soft
tousled hair, their souls at last free
from the drug-induced world they’d been in.
This image of death would last
far longer than the posed pictures
we had just seen in the National Portrait Gallery.
The young men would never know
whether, or when, an ambulance got through
to them their souls like us looking on
being told to move on along the wide crowded
pavement of passing pedestrians.
October 2016.
Copyright by D.J. Brennan, Derbyshire.
