practical jokes enacted by the universe
by Ellen Clayton
I
Grandad loved snow
and solitude.
On the day of his funeral
I imagined his wry smile
as the thickest snow I’d ever seen
blanketed the earth.
The only people able to get to the
service were those of us
close enough to brave the journey,
amidst December’s icy hush
and deadly
quiet roads.
I saw a robin, proud
and unruffled
I felt its significance
shepherding our sombre
band of mourners (all descendants)
to safety.
The service was less populated
than he deserved
but more stately somehow —
a beauty and dignity appropriate
to the 90 years he graced earth
with.
It was a fitting end.
II
There was a power cut in the
hospital, while my Dad was
in surgery having a
triple heart bypass.
Our tense, interminable wait
suddenly had an added edge
of peril. While emergency
lights flashed around the room
and alarms blared
my sisters and I stared
at each other in shock
Wondering how to hold
the frayed edges of Mum
together with this farcical,
frightening
twist of fate.
I mumbled about back-up
generators but felt I was
exacerbating the panic —
instead we sat in silence
staring about the room
watching staff members
rushing and conducting
strained, hushed
conversations.
A doomed montage played
on loop in my brain
Then
after a few minutes
my sister noticed
the alarm only seemed to be
in our particular section
of the building:
an epicentre of anxiety.
We left our chosen waiting spot
emerged
to discover
a steady, persistent light.
The scales of fate tipped back
in Dad’s favour;
our family’s flame
could not be extinguished
so easily.
Ellen Clayton is a poet from Suffolk, England, where she lives with her husband and three young children. Her poetry has been published in various online and print publications, including Capsule Stories, Nightingale & Sparrow and Anti-Heroin Chic. She has work forthcoming with Brave Voices magazine and Gutslut Press and her debut chapbook, Home-Baked, will be published in April 2022 by Bent Key Publishing. More of her work can be found on Instagram @ellen_writes_poems.
