Derek M. Ferguson
To Another Place
Remains of Blu-Tack clues
poxing its grubby white face
a plague that once informed the surgery wall
and those beneath, eyes dead ahead, in patient rows-
of old-world warnings of flu and measles epidemics
and, but of course, the need to give up smoking
I envy those in well-worn wait their coughs and aches
the doctor’s routine dispensation
in ten minutes very flat
I wonder when my poster will appear
Beware for Reproduction Kills
(please take your faulty genes and leave this place)
It started with a tremor in my hand
It’s Huntington’s* the doctor said alive at last
my brother and my father too
ahead, like madness in the missionaries
robed in our taint, to a virgin land
how would my journey be?
would I forget a friend
Do I know you?
or lose myself in landscapes?
or scream until they fed me pills and put me in a room?
When I got home,
I took the book of photos out
my father and my brother, black and white
but soon to be in colour
for they would welcome me
to each new day, over and over
always and always
the painful yesterday’s forgotten
I lit a cigarette and watched its disappearing smoke
and took another step
*Huntington’s is an inherited, incurable, progressive, neurodegenerative disease