Sometimes

Sometimes I would go fishing with Papa,
he'd take me out beyond the harbour walls
where the seas got choppy and we would see
the dolphins chasing the shoals of mackeral.
Papa would raise pots, with snapping crab,
I would like the long fingered spider ones,
they had the sweetest of flesh, worth
the long while picking them in the kitchen.

Sometimes, Papa and I would go out on walks,
he'd take my hand and lead me through the woods,
down the leafy paths, to where the pond stood,
in summer the stagnant waters with the earthy ground
would envelop you in an almost cosy shrug,
we would throw the stale bread, slap at midges,
Papa told me about the mallards and how
ducks make lousy mothers, losing half their ducklings.
I would wonder if that was my mother, except
she was the one that was lost instead.

Sometimes Papa and I would tell tall stories,
the legends he would embellish with tales of his youth,
seventy years stood between us;
my Papa was tallest man that ever stood,
he always wore a red kerchief around his neck,
the one he used to wipe my tears and the dripping
stream of cream and ice that fell making patterns in the dirt.
I sometimes wonder what could have slain such a man,
a man who had marched into trenches, survived,
hidden Russian prisoners beneath the eaves in the loft.
Buried his beloved hispana behind the walls,
they found it anyway, it was lost to him, he wiped,
the grime of years from windows and took a little girl
for walks along the high sea walls and taught me how to cast.

Sometimes when the wind changes it direction,
I think of scratched leather chairs and garden hoes,
the grapes he grew, how he tendered to their vines and
pots of brightly coloured geraniums he grew,
scratched limbs of clifftop walks, collecting sloes,
the work in pricking them and placing them in
corona bottles filled with gin and sugar, to lay
a store, placed like soldiers in a line, a sign perhaps.
It was such a simple thing that killed him in the end.
A granite step, on St Stephen's Day, where wet
and muddy he used the foot scraper to wipe the mud
and slipped and fell, with heavy crash.
I miss him now, I missed him then, but time brings smiles,
anyhow, all turned out happy in the end on
convoluted paths, which lead in ways of self recognition.










Poetry by Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 548 times
Written on 2013-06-11 at 13:28

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
This is a lovely poem, Elle, a fine remembrance (if what you've written is true; one never knows), not mawkish. It's hard to do what you have done.
2013-06-17


countryfog
To lose sight of our ancestors, especially our parents and grandparents who touched us directly, is to lose parts of us, the things they did or didn't do, the good and sometimes not so good, that have made us who and how and why we are. That you remember so endearingly and enduringly and vividly speaks beautifully of a loving and grateful heart.
2013-06-12


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
I would pray that my daughter would someday write as you have done about the minutiae of our time together and how I loved her more than she might ever know until her child wrote this of her.
2013-06-11


Rob Graber
Colorful and sentimental. Knowing the depth of your artistic imagination, I cannot help wondering how much--if any!--autobiography is in a write like this. In a way, of course, it doesn't matter; a pleasure, in any case!
2013-06-11



Such a treasure of a write ...its wealth in love and memory
2013-06-11