Lost and found
Out there, on that stub of deck,testament to the tentativeness of his ambitionsfrom the time long ago when Father Raymund had decidedthe calling he still grieved was more wish than summons.To be wrapped in a yielding black,identified with a communion of othersritualising hope in their daily lives ... ever since he had lived a consolation life, truth be told,and anxiety had become his vocation.Some things were best left suppressed. He looked towards the clumps of mangrovegrasping at a past profusion.Beyond them the water rippledwith distance or activity beneath,it was hard to tell which,and the sun slanted across it._______________________In the yardan excess of pavers clamoured at the stepsto the deck, weaved downhill past the clothesline,then petered out near the binsstanding archly by the drains. He had not much ken for things,their doggedness, their obsession with function,the certainty of their witness.Even this momentary exertion could exhaust him,so he came back inside. He caught a whiff of himself, sour disuse of age,toasty in flannelette with the heater turned up high.Washing was now timetable, not release, eatingperfunctory, the beer he sure-footedly avoidedas he huffed down into his chair, even that. He pushed the bulges of his shoulder bladesinto the worn padding and realised how stooped he was —too much sitting, hunching forward in expectation?No crane would admit to a neck like that!But skin still smooth, like his father's, in his nineties what's more.His mouth gaped involuntarily._______________________Those Campion days,a ferment of faith, a substitute fellowship now falling one-by-oneto death's rifle shot, like the man-tassels of Lark Forcestreaming south, more or less, along the bush tracks of Rabaul.Him, he took the east coast, and saw the flying boat from the shore. He waded first, then stroked to it.The pilot had to jettison supplies to fit him in.The news trickled in, prayers excised from shock,from sadness. That, too, will be her lot, to remain,inevitable as plastic tubing connected to an oxygen bottle,septum rubbed raw.___________Lilies were what he wanted,his mother's name, not much to savour of her.His sisters still argued who was the most dutiful.The coming night was leeching light from the sky.Chill descending; the heater would earn its keep. The double-layered curtains were stretched to their fullest expanse.He sought the prayer cards stuffed beneath the cushions.They were there yesterday! All that remained of the daily office denied him:a rag-and-bone manliness of intonement.Still, the old worships, words of othersdependable as