Barry Keavney

Barry Keavney Poems

The Best Poem Of Barry Keavney

The Old Man

An old gentleman popped in to see me today, an told me the story of his wife being dead.
At first I rejected what he wanted to say, but soon found his tale was consuming my head.

Five years it had been,
Since he had last seen,
The love of his life
The face of his wife
His childhood sweetheart,
Never to part.

At this point, I started to become somewhat interested.
Because in his belief, in his life, in his memories was invested; with shadows and moments, and pauses in time, with some of the shadows spent mostly time crying.
He tried to address it with a foregone demeanour. But I could see his eyes fill, swell and spill; as he painfully recalled when he’d last seen her.

Barry he glowed; I’ve travelled the world, from this end to that, and very little has showed. Not showed so much, but rather instilled, that just that one girl who was so tragically killed, could break a mans heart and tear him apart.
“To leave me so undeniably broken”, the personification of love softly spoken.

Now me; I’m quite young, in fact,27 today. I searched my own universe for something to say. I didn’t predict that experience would fail. He understood well, and continued his tale. And with his eyes facing downward, he spoke of this hell.

With no words for him, intently…I listened.
His words flowed more gently
And his eyes, simply glistened.

By this stage of his story, I wasn’t completely aware, I wasnt fully comprehending, I could only just stare. The old man before me, who had remembered with pride, had a moment of clarity, and realised that he too had died.
The singularity, the centre of the black hole, she was consumed, and had taken his soul. His laugh too was empty, and face drawn out, but something then struck me, and I was filled with no doubt;
Y’see, he’d continued to live, and smile and go on, although his childhood sweetheart was now dead and long gone.
And as I mentioned earlier of him feeling empty, I reminded him quietly, the he had memories of plenty. And it’s these thought processes that keep him alive, they keep him moving, motivated with drive. They keep him waking, breathing, seeing and trying. And shun the inevitable darkness of dying.

So we stood for a moment and pondered what had been said, and it was strange how his life story was in both of our heads. And no, I’d not known her, I felt like I did, I felt like I have loved her, if she still lived.
And that’s when it happened, that we weren’t alone;
The mind can meander,
Where the body cant roam.

In his own mind, he remembered longer, and with each fleeting memory, her presence became stronger.

And he knows now that there is a place in his mind; where the departed are seeing and the living are blind.
Where she will still greet him with her ever coy smile, and they enjoy each other for another small while.

As quick as it started, it ended as just. Both coversation, and life just as much.
Then with a smile, and a nod of his head, we both realised,
We will never be dead.

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