Logopolis - 2

My ma's busy in the scullery

While my brother and I wait

For the Doctor -

Grief as heavy to us both

As it is new.Ceramic clinks! of washed dishes

Pepper the soft C major notes

Of a melancholic piano

Drifting in from the radio.

My ma hums along distantly -

Is she thinking of Barney too

From her safe place.

That’s how I remember her –

Residing in the kitchen

Of every lived-in House,

A radio as her companion,

She as mine –

An essential constant

Like the Doctor’s Companions.

After all, what is the Doctor

Without the likes of Rose

Susan, Amy and so many others?

A galactic drifter satisfying his

Wandering curiosity 

On our tiny, mortal affairs?

But unlike his companions, 

Discarded with Gallifreyan whimsy,

I won’t discard my mother's moments.

Like a failsafe,

Each is encoded with a song – 

A musical TARDIS

Buried in the ripples of space and time.

Random music transmitted on radio

Airways, and people act

To retrieve these 'moment capsules'; 

Bottled messages on a dark ocean,

Each moment impervious

To the natural forces

Of time as it crashes down upon them.

I watch from the living room

As she washes the last plate,

Lost in her own thoughts.

She turns and smiles at me

With a mother's softness

And instantly my grief is eased.

A song for guy fades like a vague dream

As Doctor Who begins,

But it doesn’t matter;

The moment is already bottled,

And just like the TARDIS

It is cast into space and time.