My Father's Hands

 

My father's hands

Strong, capable, tanned.

Turning the steering wheel

the sunlight on their backs

Veins sticking out, like contours on a map.

Shifting the gear, 

knowing exactly where to go,

and how to get there.

 

Raising glasses.  Punching the air.

Screwing in screws.

Thumb to the tongue to lick off the notes

when paying the bill, 

and always too much.

 

Generous hands.

Steadying hands.

Holding the back of my bike

my mouth above water

my feet on the ground

my head in the air

my weight on his shoulders.

 

My father's hands

Taking mine, holding mine,

smacking mine, patting mine.

Grabbing mine when I should stay,

grasping mine when I would stray.

And always there, a smooth, sure grip

To steer me on my way.

 

Other hands hold out to me

and will do through the length of life.

Friends' hands.  Children's hands.

Strangers' hands, lovers' hands.

Such intimacy in fingertip to fingertip

and palm to living palm.  So lovely,

to touch and stroke and hold and squeeze

 

But I would give up all of these

For just one moment

Clasp to loving clasp,

to feel again my ageing hands

Enclosed within my father's hands.

 

 

ABORTEE

​

    Whose am I?

​

Am I yours, mother?

In exchange for a moment's ease,

did you call my soul from the long night's sleeping

and welcome me into your womb?

No. You prepare a tomb.

​

Am I yours, my father,

because indiscriminate passion

spewed out on a biotic, loveless, quest

began Me, where it ended?

No.  I am not intended.

​

     Whose am I?

 

     Am I mine?

 

Do I own all these tickings and turnings,

clinging, parasitic, to an unwilling host?

 

I am not yet free to belong to Me.

 

But no man or woman owns Me

No Law, no Science or Philosophy.

I exist because it is the way

I belong to the eternal stream of life after life

I belong to my God.

And there is no culture not degraded

by the murder of Me

and of my children, and of theirs, and of theirs.

Yet returned to the world's greater womb

I am saved.

Not abandoned, not betrayed.

 

Though Strength has slaughtered Liberty

I shall have my day.  Not now, but hereafter.

And they will pay. 

​

​

3  A.M.

​

On the tail of the night, wide-eyed and restless,

Warming my toes on some new lover's flesh

The old pain rushes in, nagging. relentless,

A token of times when I warmed to the best.

 

Across the dark city, where road elbows street,

Do you, love, still share my sad, lamplight time?

Do you sleeplessly warm another's cold feet

And ache to remember they could have been mine?

 

 

 

OUT OF LOVE

 

Too out of love to be true to love,

Too scared to let you go.

Yet prostition of the heart

Will not be bargained so.

And nothing is so falsely kind,

As bleak unfaithfulness of mind.

 

The wound from which a torrent flowed

Drips now the meanest blot,

And cool the blood beneath my hand

Where once it flooded hot.

And I, with careless art, devise

To catch indifference in your eyes.

 

And yet we cling with words unsaid,

To fete a love unfelt.

Play passion's habit with our lips

But grieve when lust is dealt.

And at the turning of the day,

We turn, whilst swearing still to stay.

 

 

 

THE NEW CLOTH

 

She watches as crumbs fall from cake

And later on that day, the pinpricks of gravy splashed,

a pea, neatly squashed beneath the plate.

Custard blobs, grape-pips, candle grease.

Cost a fortune.  Never mind.

It's what it's there for.  Save the table.

 

Crumbs shake off

and other things brush off, scratch off, soak off.

 

But red wine is quite another matter.

Dried to pink, like beetroot stains, or blood.

No shifting.  No scrubbing will see these gone.

As words, once dripped from lip to lap are there forever

And tears, once spilt, leave a stain on the heart.

There are some things that never come out in the wash.

 

 

 

IF WE

 

If we only love for now

This hour, this night, this year,

If this is all we have

Then let us make it grand

A month or a lifetime

To say at the end,

That was my all.

Our love, our lust, our laughter,

A splendour to last

Our loss.

Through all the grey times,

the daytimes, when thought

will you back again

And wherever I might be

I shall return to the solitude of you

The beauty, the peace, and the love of you

And amidst the noise,

the jaded joys,

Find my being and guarded grace

In the memory of that hour, night, year,

So long ago,

when you loved me

And my world hurtled

To your bright pace

And for a space,

You were my all.