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SWINGING ON THE PEARLY GATE

The first time I came to Huntingdon Gardens to read,
a resident, named Mabel planted in me a seed,
when she told me a story about her Gran,
and the famous writer, Robert Louis Stevenson.
 
It was drizzly, in the overcast tropical way,
eight grandchildren outside, busy at play,
yelling, screaming, running around,
bathing in the rain, splashing the ground.
 
Grandma had decided, it was a good day
to visit the cemetery, calling the kids on the way,
all gathered round, she told them of the plan,
to climb Mount Vaea, visit their Great Gran.
 
Reaching the summit, they found her space,
scrubbing brushes were given, to clean the place.
“Now go to the others, their people aren’t here,
pull out the grass, scrub the headstone clear.”
 
Mabel began to scrub, wondering why they hadn’t come,
how graves got so dirty, not cared for by anyone.
High up on the mountain, surrounded by the trees,
the words which emerged before her were these;
 
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will,
This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.”

 
She remembered the stories, taught on school days,
about the white pioneer, who arrived and stayed,
lost amongst the women, their tropical ways,
sitting, talking business with the chiefs for days.
 
Looking across the ocean, to the breakers on the reef,
she softly started to talk about culture, spiritual belief,
“It’s good to put your people to rest in a nice space,
at night they come out, to look around the place”.
 
I went home and thought about all Mabel had said,
couldn’t get the images of her story out of my head.
So I went back to see her, took pages of notes
wanting to use her words, take some direct quotes.
 
Over the months of researching this man,
slowly I’ve learnt to understand,
what it was he was trying to find,
a place to recover, explore his mind.
 
The creator of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
travelled the ocean far and wide,
searching for a restful place by the sea,
to spend his last days, wild and free.
 
In a forest, clearing paths through the land,
gathering at sunset, with a glass in hand,
writing for hours amongst the pounding,
the rhythmic beat of waves upon grounding.
 
We talked for months as each verse grew
Then she told me what she’d seen and knew,
her mother was swinging on the pearly gate,
"the hinge will break if she has to wait".
 
I went to visit Mabel before I moved away,
she said not to rush our poem, let it find its way,
to walk along the oceans edge gazing out to sea,
amongst waves the final words would come to me.
 
A few months later on the beach of Boomerang
a solitary crow in the dunes behind me sang,
as an SMS came through from a friend to say,
"I’m sorry to tell you, Mabel has passed away".
 
I smiled and imagined her fixing the gate,
no longer in pain or being made to wait,
back with her ancestors, alive in the sky,
glad did she live and gladly she died.
 
Morganpoet
 
Written by Morganpoet
Published | Edited 15th Feb 2023
Author's Note
I was running Poetry Therapy sessions at an Aged Care facility in Sydney when I met Mabel back in 2005 and working on this poem with her is something I will always treasure.

"Mount Vaea is best known as the burial place of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived the last four years of his life in Samoa before his death on 3 December 1894. Stevenson, who had lived on the east side of Mount Vaea, had chosen the mountain top as his final resting place."
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