Father Anniversaries (2) - by Peter Neary-Chaplin

October 19th 2013

It was a tumbleweed visit
though he would have thought that word
daft.
Hee hee you silly josser, he would have grinned.
Here lies my father,
twenty years under ground
and counting
in slow earth time.

I looked with half a heart for all my stories.
Couldn't seem to find them anywhere.
I made a lazy trawl for all my lacks,
but they were absent too.

On earlier visits I was pretty good, I recall,
studiously forgiving him
for what he had not been,
for his age,
for the man circuits he never installed in me.
Now I ask it of him,
not because I or he were wrong,
just that now I have a son
and that's how things are.
It falls away, the need to get things right.
We meet at the understanding grave,
washed and worn by rain,
one cold, one warm,
being used up.

Nothing needed doing.
I polished the stone
and tidied up
the ragged, stemmy lavendar
that still pushes out a scent.