Sunday 17 June 2012

Happy Father's Day

A poem for Father's day but especially those who have lost their Dads in the last year.

Frills

My first Father’s Day without him
and I’m tasting a big
Rocky Road cake of emotions
served on a plate with paper frills;
the soft, the sweet
the crunchy, the zesty
the nutty and the sharp.
There will be brothers to call
and that feels like something
Dad would be pleased I did.
Though he always did kept us
guessing about approval.

His last birthday, we hired a hotel
and held a Yorkshire Cream Tea
(which is like a normal Cream Tea
but with a dozen gobstopper scones each)
and Dad wore the most ridiculous frilled shirt;
a shirt you’d only wear for a bet
or if cast as a low rent Austin Powers,
but it was Dad making an effort
ten years after Mum was around to
guide, hint or simply say
“Over my dead body”!

In review, I now see the first flirts of illness,
the early misfiring of organs
but I missed them at the time
hidden by that shirt and his best teeth.
Dad, proud and independent till the last.
I haven’t tried to forget
but neither have I tried to remember,
until today.

So although he wouldn’t approve
there will be tears;
regrets will be dusted off one more time
and I’ll probably think
about that shirt,
frills on a man who had none.
Love and families are indeed
a rocky road
but worth the effort.