In Memory of my Dad on Fathers Day

Kick Off

September fresh we start again, 
by early autumn nipped to ruddy life.

New season’s paint has reddened smooth 
my fragrant iron resting place.

The terrace choir’s achant, 
brown baritone and tenor bright.

And holy Bruno climbs from briar censers 
as Bovril salts my tongue.

And there you stand:

Brylcream-slicked and shiny-shoed,

your china-blues ablaze,

your Woodbine-yellowed fingers
shoveled thick and calloused 
kindly holding me.

And I, 
thrilled by bigness smalling me, 
otherness calling me,

Gifted, belonging and beckoned on, 
I know from you I will not run for fancied wealth to slops

nor break my bonds for freedom-false but rest content

and dream of what will one day be.

Then, as pigeons flap from floodlight frame and, haloed, hover,  

echoes down the years:

“This is my beloved

in whom I am,

in whom I am well,

in whom I am, well, pleased.”