Monday 13 March 2017

Arc of a diver

This is from the archives. first posted on the poetry blog in 2009.


I am aware that I am being most horribly punished for my actions and there is nothing I can do because I have already gone too far. This is unequivocal.

My assumption was; when my life flashed through my minds eye as I fell to my death, that it would contain itself to my past!

Such is the speed at which the human brain can work when pressed that I am allowed the luxury of this consideration as I watch both the wall of the multistory slip by and my future (or what future I would have had, had I not decided to take this final action) flash forward.

So now I know! For one nano-second I am enlightened and it has taken my own snuffing of the candle to illuminate me; what a paradox and surely one that only people such as me have ever been aware of… For if one dies a natural death at the moment specified in our timelines there would be no future life left to taunt us!

In this split second as I plummet headlong to the concrete below I am allowed the horror of seeing the Cancer misdiagnosed and good health regained. I witness the love and patience of my wife as she supports me through the trials of becoming successful as an artist, as she bears me a beautiful daughter who burgeons into an even more beautiful woman who brings two delightful grandchildren into my no longer possible life. I witness the retrospective at the Tate and the accolades that that itself would bring. I kneel before the King and humbly accept my Knighthood. I die peacefully at home, aged 92, surrounded by the people I would have loved!

It occurs to me that my punishment, though harsh, ends now.

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