Family Matters

Occasionally I'm moved to write poetry but haven't done so for a few years. Here is a piece I wrote about twenty years ago when my youngest daughter was about ten years old and my father had been dead twenty years. He waved goodbye to me at Tullamarine through those terrible double sliding doors in that vastly impersonal International Departures concourse of the time. I never saw him alive again.

I've re-jigged it a bit, though.

I think I was ten

My father said 'Son wear your heart on your sleeve.'
But he was too scared to permit me, you see

So I tugged it full down there and then.

And when I was twelve
My dad wanted me to be 'generous of heart.'

But I was beset by his caution; what's more
I allowed it to beat to his drum.

Now my daughter is ten
And she doesn't hold back all the feeling -

soul-healing - she's learning to open the door
to a time she can live her own story.

So inside there's a grin
And I watch as she grows

And remember my dad's good intentions.

It's true what they say -
Children grow their own way

Not possessions or useful inventions.

But now I am older
And grown somewhat bolder

Because of my father's fine passion.

When my daughter's excited
She lives life ignited

with laughter and hope and unfrightened.

It's then that I see it
The lightning that he lit

And I hold myself back
On the path that I trek...

To remember my father:
His shining eyes smiling
And his hand held up high in farewell.