Old Moments by Alistair Grey

Some moments stay as fresh and clear

as this morning or five minutes ago

though crowds of later, mostly forgotten events
have killed or changed people I used to know.

In nineteen sixty-one and the month we wed

I pleased a roomful of folk so much that

‘I’m proud of you,’ my young wife said.

Our son liked to walk holding my hand

for years before he was ten.

If another boy came in sight we parted,

walked like strangers until, round a corner,

he thought it right for us to join hands again.

My marriage ended soon after.

My son dislikes me now, is a real stranger.

Queer how, near my own end, such old moments
stay so uselessly fresh and clear.

Sunk ships do not dream of wreck,
storms and battles that sank them.
Their hulls recall wakening to din
of final rivets hammering in,

a glide down a slipway and how
their bow first bit into brine

that buoyed them up and out to sea,
brine dissolving them now.