Unceasing care

It was good to get out on Gowbarrow today. I was starting to get cabin fever!

Came across Seneca's essay 'On the Shortness of Life' by the bed this morning. I hadn't looked at it before thinking the title was self explanatory but found these passages underlined ...

'A man sound in mind knocks in vain at the doors of poetry' (Plato).

'So here you have, my dear Serenus, the means of preserving your tranquility, the means of restoring it, and the means of resisting the faults that creep up on you unawares. But be sure of this, that none of them is strong enough for those who want to preserve such a fragile thing, unless the wavering mind is surrounded by attentive and unceasing care.'

By the bed

The Shortness of Life.
Seemed obvious.
(...'What do you want?
A degree in the bleeding obvious?'
- as Basil Fawlty would say to Sybil,
in anger and frustration
at her indifference
to his sensibilities).

A short book
A skeletal title
On bone white,
Sallow skin.

A half moon mug stain
Bleeds and fades into the fabric -
A breakfast coffee from
Another life.

I had dared not look
Before now.
Too angry.
This is still a sick bed
A death bed.

But lying there
All this time
A gentle call
An abiding reminder
Of the fragile thread
Of love and 'unceasing care'
That strings lives together
And binds them
Always.
This bed has a half life
Wondering how to live.