A Scientific Family: Fourteenth Tattersby

 

 

The Folly

Tattersby

 

 

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A Scientific Family

 

You won’t

Until the sun finds its moment

Steadfast tick of bodies set in motion

Until the turning earth has lost its math

And the red eye blinks at the black-rimmed gorge’s gap

You won’t have seen night fall

From the cockpit of an aeroplane

You won’t have seen night fall

 

I’d passed by any chance to make an observation

I’d thought, when the work was done, I might

Come to pass the time of day in a deck chair

Lucille I likely saw there…it could not have been Fiona

Not really visiting this notion

I want now

(You seem a kind and patient man)

To say a thing. I have been thinking of appearances.

 

When Atherleigh—you’ll recall, we were a scientific family

Was ruled definitely killed, by the blast

I can’t say more—

 

The still Hon. Simon Tattersby’s voice fades off

And the host, writing to his creditors

Wondering if another paying customer is in the cards

Says aloud, after minutes of the clock’s pendulum

Sounding in quietude its irregular chute, chute

‘Chap’s gone. Bit of a bore.’

 

Tattersby says, ‘I apologize. Struck me odd. I could tell you

all the trials of the lab. What they’d been working on. What

my elder brother confided. I believe I can. No Official Secrets Act

for the dead. But I shan’t.’

 

 

 

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A Scientific Family

Utter Blame: Fifteenth Tattersby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2017, Stephanie Foster)