When did I last consider my heart,
pay it a little attention, honour
its sixty steadfast years in the dark?
Hardly notice it, my mind focused
on slicing an onion, on what I ought
to have said or done, the story I’m reading
now, Alice Munro, or remembering my dead
aunt Nin’s laugh, those half crowns for ice creams.
Yet all the time it’s working, beating on
constantly, like a god I forget
the existence of, keeping my blood
moving through its thousands of miles
of tunnels, making it still possible for me
to nod off after supper, to wonder
about Water Aid or no longer
postponing phoning my brother,
to nurse a baby grudge, fatten it up.
It’s the size of my fist and weighs no more
than eleven ounces. If I bend back
my wrist, I can see the pulse twitch.
Millions of times. You can do the sums.
That’s stamina for you, dedication.
Old squeezebox of mine, what do you mean
by your quiet insistence? What do you want
beyond the few lengths of the pool I swim
most days for you, and my sensible diet?
© Michael Laskey, from The Man Alone (2008)
Picture 11079754, Camerique photograph, image copyright Mary Evans / Classic Stock
Michael Laskey has published five collections of poetry, most recently Weighing the Present (Smith|Doorstop, 2014) and The Man Alone: New & Selected Poems (2008). His first two collections were Poetry Book Society Recommendations: Thinking of Happiness (Peterloo, 1991) and The Tightrope Wedding (Smith/Doorstop, 1999), which was also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. He co-founded the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1989 and directed it through its first decade. He also founded and co-edited the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll with Roy Blackman (1991-2002) and Joanna Cutts (2002-2012) until the final fiftieth issue in November 2012. He published pamphlets under the Smiths Knoll imprint until 2016, and still continues his work as an editor with The Garlic Press (which he established 2003) which principally publishes Suffolk based poets. He was a founding member of the East Suffolk Poetry Workshop group which has been meeting monthly for thirty years. He is a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
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