A CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER
You are like a Lowry painting etched upon
The canvas of my mind,
This is the only picture I retain:
Uncomplicated brush strokes,
Simple intersecting lines,
Neat suited, bowler hatted, slight,
Teeth worn down, clamped tight
Around your burr-wood pipe,
Never properly alight,
You were not warm, not cold and certainly not hot,
You were not kind nor either were you unkind,
Simply, you were not.
You were always there but never really
There for me to find,
And I must have been the same,
Two parallel tramlines, ever consigned
Not to converge: Our meeting confined,
To Cinzano time, that ritual, every night,
After the London train arrived,
You would alight at Polegate station,
And your fellow passengers would invite
You to join them for a quick half
In the Railway Tavern.
And then, at seven on the dot,
The taxi would arrive (my mother),
And bear you home, your rolled umbrella
Neatly propped behind the door,
And I, now taught the art, would proudly pour
Two Cinzanos with a little ice,
Then small talk, before
We settled down to telly supper,
After supper, told not once but twice,
Protesting, to go to bed.
You are like a Lowry painting etched upon
The canvas of my mind,
And as I grope for answers,
As the picture clears, I find,
The lonely, fragile figure that I see
Is not you: It's not you . . . It's me!
NEXT (A SHORT STORY)