Panic Attack.

Mann, Chris

Panic Attack

   Keys exasperated you. Searching the house for mine,
   I felt a sudden rush of angst then thought of the day
   you drove up from the coast to see the doctor in town.

   I stood on the pavement to say goodbye, remember?
   Soil-dust and grit billowed in gusts down New Street
   as the farm-trucks, cars and a donkey-cart came past.

   Your back to the traffic, still deftly, gaily talking away,
   you leaned up against your old white Honda Ballade,
   cherished still in family parlance as the rust bouquet.

   You'd stuck a dark blue golf-hat jauntily on your head,
   had bound a pale beige veil of chiffon around your face
   like a film-star evading the media and spurning fashion

   had perched your pointy black sunglasses between you
   and the glaring heat of a midsummer day in the sticks.
   I loved the way your imagination bridled at the staid,

   at how it made exuberant theatre out of fleeting encounters
   with townsfolk outside the beach care, at a till in a shop.
   Kenning after kenning, I still hear the voice-trail you left:

   Your Mom's such a character! What a sense of humourt.
   Didn't someone say she was on the stage ... in London?
   Now there's a tough lady, living by herself on that dune/

   I'm standing again on the pavement, listening to you,
   you're rummaging in your huge leather shoulder bag,
   the one with 'zips for Africa' you seized on in Florence.

   Next thing you're plunging, lunging, groping about
   in one dark empty cavity of a nightmare after another
   as a dusty cattle-truck rattles past, so close; behind you.

   Please God! you cry out, they were here, right here!
   No, surely, I couldn't have left them on the counted
   Head down, pleading, sighing, you keep on groping

   for these aren't just the gate-codes to a house and car,
   they also unlock the heavy steel filing cabinet at home
   which like a tabernacle, trucked from suburb to suburb,

   enshrines the potent privacies of our nomadic lineage,
   the bank-codes and wills, the ante-nuptial contracts,
   the id papers, passports, salary slips and title deeds

   as well as the birth, death and marriage certificates,
   a silver-plated teaspoon from a golfing tournament,
   Grandpa's old wallet, Dad's revolver from the war.

   I call, as cheerfully as I can, across the roof of the car,
   Hey, take it easy, Ma! You'll find them in a minute!
   but head down, you go on lunging, pleading, panting,

   for this isn't about keys anymore, it's about being old
   and sickly and living in a house like a family museum
   when every evening robbery and rape is on the news,

   it's about faith struggling to make sense of widowhood
   and feeling abandoned, it's about reason's sweet sanity
   fumbling round the burn-holes opening up in the brain,

   it's about the terror that comes in the dark small hours
   from thinking about dying, uncared for and alone,
   it's about telling me each time I phone and urge you

   to come and stay at our place or move into a home,
   Nonsense, I never want to burden the young, not me.
   Your defiance was only matched by your desperation.

   You jerk, as if you've suddenly remembered something,
   yank open the shopping bag that's on the boot of the car
   and start plunging through the bread rolls and tomatoes,

   the newspaper and aerosol cans, your face so frightened,
   so drawn and rigid it sparks a link, deep down somewhere
   with that painting of a scream when Got themf you shout,

   Oh praise God, darling, I've got them, got them, got them!
   With that you hoick them out of the groceries in triumph,
   jingle them for a moment in the sun-space above your hat
   and then, enfolding their flash-glints of bronze and silver
   tightly in both your hands you give a great sigh of release
   and press, press, press their ciphers against your breast.

   It would have been melodrama were it not so totally real.
   You made me think of the time, years back in the dune-bush
   when you scooped up a grey-black scrap of brindled kitten

   found mewing on its own and held it close against you
   saying, Easy, easy now! as it squirmed, frantic with life.
   Only later did I notice the streaks of red on your palms.