Why I Write
I should have realised forty years ago
that my father would amount to nothing;
we had just two tiny patches of lawn
one out the back and one at the front
just the aggressive, drought-hardy Kikuyu.
Where the back one ended
there was tyre-trodden earth
spattered in places with sump oil
and at the front, the grass gave way
to a wind-swept strawberry patch
and then to an acre of weeds
which my father would plough in
every few years; there was no expanse of green
as McCarthies had, no Charles-Atlas-shoulder
lawn-edges from endless top dressing and rolling
like at the bank manager’s place
there wasn’t even a giant shed filled with NK West
Patented Grape Picking Machines
looming above the house.
Although my father loved words
both their sound and meaning
there were no books in our house
except for shrivelled Reader’s Digest novels
everything about our place told anyone passing
that here lived a man who had laughed at a visiting pianist
because he wore gloves in summer
and fifty years later, was still asking us, as if we should know
why no one had heard of the man since
if he’d been as good as everyone had claimed; no
my father would be forgotten
so soon after the blip of his own life
had ceased to insist on its journey across
the screen.
The Endless Necessity of Dreaming
Dying woman
woken for her analgesic
“You shouldn’t have disturbed me;
I was dancing!”