Crash — A Poem
It’s my wife’s birthday today. We are spending much of it with family and then having an evening in London at some live music. So, not a lot of time for posting new, original, and exciting content.
That’s why I’m inflicting another poem on you. This one is about fathers and sons and the inevitable disappointments when fathers and sons fail to meet the other’s expectations.
CRASH
There it is. Above the red car. See it?
It hangs, false flying, yellow, wings
rigid like a broken promise.
I’ll buy it for you, for you
to show your mother.
~
On blue days we watched the sky.
A light aeroplane turned cartwheels
in the sun and its engine moaned and roared
like the waves hitting the rocks beneath
our house.
~
Gulls echoed the machine’s flight
and skimmed the sea
screeching against their lives
and the pattern of their days
as the white tips spit salt into the air.
~
In that salt spray I felt the hot
oil and wind in the face of the pilot.
I tipped my head and followed every
corkscrew turn beneath my father’s smile
in case the pilot made
one small error
and landed
on us.
~
My father held my hand as I hold yours, now.
This shop was here when I was a boy,
a mystery,
but the only plane I had was by looking up.
Do you want it? A late birthday present?
“Can I have the red car instead?”
