Halloween Sonnet Contest: Last Requests, Felicity Teague

Felicity Teague features regularly in The HyperTexts, Snakeskin, and elsewhere. Her second collection, Interruptus: A Poetry Year, is forthcoming in 2025.

Last Requests

He greets me with his usual half-salute
as I approach the summit of the hill.
It’s winter, but he’s in a linen suit,
the type he wore before becoming ill.
I call, “Hi Grandad!”, slightly out of breath
from climbing and from carrying the things
he asked for just an hour or so from death:
some ice cream, and his dressing gown with strings
to keep him decent. Hospital was grim,
but now we needn’t talk about the ward.
We sit together, sing his favourite hymn;
up here, we must be closer to the Lord
or what it is that brings me once again
to grant his last requests, so far from pain.

Comments

  1. F.F. TeagueNovember 2, 2024 at 11:45 PM

    Alex, many thanks for posting the sonnet, and indeed for arranging all the contests, in which I've been happy to participate :-)

    ReplyDelete

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