Andrew talks to gulls - by George Roberts, for his son

standing on a string of grey rocks
reaching out into the clear water
andrew talks to gulls

his voice     sliding through octave cries
light as time    lifts in clouds of gulls
and draws their tiny black eyes

he thinks those pure white birds come
out of the sky and across years of water
for the pieces of bread he scatters to them

i know the sun dancing on their yellow beaks
is in honor of this small boy
whose voice remembers

he too    once wore
white feathers

From Brother Songs, A Male Anthology of Poetry

Initiation - by Adrian G R Scott

The hug you gave me in that first moment
of diagnosis was vice like, sob racked.

Type one diabetes, at sixteen
a hammer blow and a terrible fear
realised in the time it takes
to go and out of the surgery door.

Now you prick your fingers every day,
that sharp droplet touched to the blue strip,
a trill pronouncing the amount
of sugar sweetening your blood.

Then the second wound, insulin in,
to the flesh of your stomach,
a place I once made raspberries
with my lips to make you laugh.

Initiation the ancient art
of wounding the boy,
teaching him that his bleeding could
become a place of wisdom,
that he needed to learn to weep out loud,
to wield his new found strength
in the service of something larger,
that he was part of a greater story.

What kind of a Dad do you need now?

One who has done his own bleeding,
who is not frightened by his own shadow,
who can call time on his own ego.

A man ready to start the next chapter called your story,
an on-going narrative that he will leave before it ends.

But Son, in the time we have left
can we embrace again like on that day?

Connected as men, sharing our pain
at sea on a strange ocean,
initiated by all this unasked for suffering.

Distinct - your journey not mine,
yet for a time in the same boat.

Carried by the true tide of courage to a shore
I want to reach first and wait for you to join me.

From Arriving In Magic, by Adrian G R Scott.