Dad: A poem

Daddy, the years have simply fallen by

and yet it seems only yesterday

when the world was just a few paces

You bore a sickly child home

You were solidity in childish insecurities

Mother’s sad stories, teachers’ woes

A childhood amid dim comprehensions

but for the comfort of a home

While away, you were always there

your absence in working hours being a presence

Love consigns time to its sepulchre

Even distance becomes a circle

Only childhood can fill such voids

can make forests sing in your ears

like little rhymes. Your clumsy compositions

Your vague tales with vaguer creatures

It seems your gift to me was imagination

The bird that you set soaring like a draught

mapping strange horizons, breathing vivid realms

These coloured gifts I made my nests

Years later, I found no use for it

when locked with death, you starved for words

I only wrote a poem on your passing

Just as my boyish innocence fled