Author: Tom Ling (Page 1 of 4)

For Helen and Harry

He stared with care as fish swam towards him

in an alchemy of welcome.

Bubbles circled fish, a plastic diver, and a mermaid’s chair –

until silently bursting into air.

His daughter – mother of his grandchildren –

played fragments of half-remembered tunes,

letting fingers find paths

along the keyboard of an old piano.

‘Bach’ he said, waiting for confirmation.

She laughed. ‘Bach as it should be played!’

He smiled, his doubts delayed.

Then two nurses sat with them.

‘Do you know this tune, Harry?’ one asked

as Helen played some more.

He said, ‘it might be Handel.’

But who Handel was, he was no longer sure.

‘Where are the keys for our apartment, Helen?’ he said,

‘Harry, I have them here,’ she kissed his head.

And arm-in-arm they walked to Ward C4, diazepam, and bed.

It was Saturday night at the fish and piano bar.

I bought you tulips in Cambridge market

and, for no good reason, thought to mark it

with a smile to all who passed me by

as I walked from Market Hill to home.

Welcoming eyes down Trinity Street

and smiles for all on Magdelene Bridge,

each one with a happy echo,

and so, at Kettles Yard, I added a tentative ‘hello’.

Outside Shire Hall – though this is not how Cambridge men behave –

Abandonning self-restraint, I gave a wave.

By Victoria Road, I offered bear-hugs for folk who favour this,

and hand-shakes for those who like less ursine bliss.

At St Lukes Church I asked the Vicar for a kiss

(but for legal reasons let the record show,

though not yet Lent, Philippa still said ‘no’).

Approaching home, I welcomed all

to my contented place, my happy heart,

our joyful, sharing, oh so human powers.

Everyone smiles at an older man carrying flowers.

True Stories, NCI Club, January 2026

Once upon a time

On hard plastic chairs with all the comfort of the rack

I crossed my legs to ease my painful back

and waited….

We watched a slender, older woman

watching us. She let our attention settle, and began her tale.

She had crawled through potholes, dragging gear,

deep into Devon’s shoreline caves.

Tired, she reached an expanse of water

where she pulled on mask and wet suit, air tanks, and buoyancy control

like a medieval knight pulled on chain mail, gauntlet, and visor

making practiced checks for safety’s sake.

We entered her tale as surely as she entered the lake.

The Lady of the Lake,

moves between black air and blacker water,

seen only in the corner of an eye,

between moss-covered rocks and deep mystery

she conjures necromancy

and builds castles in the air.

In depths too deep for plant or fish

she reaches for the touch of lost Excalibur

just as my hands grip this plastic chair.

But to our tale.

Her headlamp lit the rope descending,

the coldness

pulling down,

to a darkness that existed

before there was light.

Diving deeper she found a passage

to a second chamber

and there

lost all sense of gravity

saw strange creatures at

each turn of her torch.

Gripped, she thought

her rebellious air tanks

sucked oxygen from her lungs.

No diving buddy,

no white knight,

to raise a thumb

Or guide her back to safety.

I dived into this cavernous story

my face mask visor tightened, my buoyancy neutral,

I floated without gravity among memories dismembered

in deep time’s creation where myth

tells what made us, but had been un-remembered.

The Teller and the Lady both survived their tale.

Back in the cave’s mouth she smelt again cow dung and fresh air.

Ballads would be sung of this, bowdlerized, and shared;

the risks would gain with lustre as each year past,

swords would be pulled from ever tighter rock,

and yet more monstrous creatures conjured from their lair.

I had met them all on my painful, plastic chair.

For almost a millennium,

when all their deeds that would be done were done,

the island brought its people here to bury them.

Now, fifty years since mourners sang their final sorrows,

the chapel’s wooden roof has fallen in on generations of loss.

In the graveyard, bones bed shallowly on carboniferous rocks

and, above, flat gravestones announce each life’s scant details.

The bones beneath are grown by this island;

cartilage scaffolds new growth, tissues grow longer and wider

until collagen ossifies, for a first short life, in flesh

anticipating a longer second life in Cill Cheannannach,

where each bone waits beneath its chosen stone.

They appeared by our kitchen window,

some sombrely on foot,

others in more cars, we thought, than were on the island.

At the front, a green van had been repurposed as an adequate hearse.

At the rear, hurried two mopeds and a bike.

Give or take, the whole island was there.

With my hands in the washing-up,

I watched their sad-slow journey down the hill,

an ancient, organic commonality,

to the graveyard by the sea.

Any differences, I fancied, put to one side in the makeshift hearse.

It is right that a funeral should pause our routine tasks

and draw us closer to the living.

Facing death, our minds slide like hobnail boots on scree,

without grip, our thoughts fall through our guts,

air in our lungs expands until we cannot speak

our hearts choke our mouths.

So, lost for words, it is human touch we dumbly seek.

Now, the burial is over, the group divides.

A mother waits while her child picks daisies,

the late arriving youth hurries back to his bike,

cars are started quietly, and, muffled, move slowly up the hill,

and one small group remains silently by the freshly dug earth.

Later that night, we join the wake.

It was in the mourners left the graveside in ones and twos,

now, eased by community, Guiness and sandwiches,

grief no longer displaces words,

and tongues can talk without the taste of death,

the child with the daisies has made of her mother a bed,

draping her with red hair and her best black frock,

muscular arms which that morning had wrangled sheep

now reach out to each other past the slurry of sadness.

Gradually, thoughts in the room turn to days ahead,

cattle to be seen to, and children put to bed.

How do you speak to me?
With what occult science and hidden roses
do you address the crystals in my heart?
Your empty arms that would embrace the world
embrace me too.

My visible whiteness, my easy privilege,
your gay black manhood.
When I had two much-loved white babies,
there was no noise that hissed
‘white men make bad fathers’.
I never had to ask a lover
‘does your mother know you’re fucking a white man?’
I too have been followed by store detectives across shopping zones
but never for my provocative skin tones.

Let’s share our family albums.
You; barbeques and blackened chicken,
shining ribs, and beer, and pop.
Me; grinning at graduations, gowns on,
and hats doffed to the universe.
You; the gay un-childed uncle,
Me; arms full of future generations

Yet how do you speak to me now?
In this gallery of modern art
you shout ‘mudha fucka’ in this Rothko chapel
where we come to silently worship.
You tell me that loneliness is a shared enterprise,
it kills us when we fall apart,
that partial justice is justice for none
and with every silence, we are undone.

How do you speak to me?
You promised every honey chil’
that your angels would be tall, black, drag queens.
Now they haunt this gallery
for all with eyes to see.

On Brighton’s pebble beach, patrolled by seagulls,
two women sat in white linen.
Each fingered the warm beach pebbles
feeling the last of the spring day’s warmth.

We watched as they stood, gathering clothes and shopping.
One draped a scarf around her neck
and placed her hand on the other’s head in a gentle benediction.
Printed on her bag was a simple instruction:

Find Heaven

Father and son play Gnaoua music
In what was once a palace.
The son holds his guembri
As one day he will hold his baby.
When he sings, his voice is far away.
Father, lifts his Krakeb, one in each hand,
Then, seeing there was work to be done,
Commands the stage:
Taka Bik Bok
Taka Bik Bok
Taka Bik Bok
The guembri plays a different beat
It shifts the flow
Taa ta tata ta, tata tat ta
Taa ta tata ta, tata tat ta
Taa ta tata ta, tata tat ta
Three beats play against two

Now krakeb lead:
Ta dila tat, ta dila tat
Ta dila tat, ta dila tat
Ta dila tat, ta dila tat
And over this vocals call
And respond
Call
And respond
And then once more.

Until at some unseen signal,
Father and son in unison,
Hold their music close,
Drawn into their hearts.

Then, before the final flourish,
Father moves us on again –
Son’s thumb slaps the guembri skin
Then krakeb go:
Dura dura, dura dura, dura dura
Guembri goes:
Doe du reera, doe do reera, doe do reera
Together they go:
Doe ra ro reera, Doe raro reera, doe ra ro reera.

This music atones.
Call, response, competing rhythms
Knock the edges off each other
Until all forms melt.
This is me, this is you,
This is our ancestors speaking;
And they speak in the language of song.
Those who came before
Dipped their cups in the same melodic well
Where we drink today,
Where the water is always fresh
And no two mouthfuls taste the same.

Nothing comes of nothing.
Slaves from West Africa
Brought their spirits to the Maghreb.
They met with Sufism in the musical garden.
Together they had so much healing to do.
They brought music, perfume, and colour to their task
And said all physicians shall be artists then
And all cures shall be sung.
All physicians shall be artists
And all cures shall be sung.

We all choose how we fly,
But there were times I feared
That you would fly with Icarus,
Your hot feathers unstuck from their glue.

But then you found your song,
Your music soared over valleys
And hugged the tight cliffs –
With just a few crash landings.

Your peregrine wings on jet streams swept the world.
Flocking with friends and resting in the eaves of strangers.
Avoiding lime traps and random guns,
One day you came home to England.

In an old mill, nested in hills, tides rise and sometimes overwhelm,
But when the sea retreats, the earth is soft and fertile,
The sun warms the ground and songbirds fill your room
Until it overflows with music rising in the strummed air.

We know that nothing lasts but nothing that is real is lost,
So, use your Icarus wings,
Find your sun-filled voice that sings
To the unstuck feathers.