ANOTHER POEM ABOUT MY FATHER

Another poem about my father.

Why do I write as many as I do? I am not sure how many I have written, but there are at least five poems about some aspect of his life or other. I think, though, I write to make sense of my experience and to try to understand what life must have been like for him.

Regular readers will probably know that he worked for ICI for a large chunk of his working life and may know that he was in the Second World War. He served from 1939 until 1945. He was with the Eighth Army at El Alamain, through to Monte Casino in Italy.

I still have trouble getting my head around what his life must have been like in those six years. How different his experiences were to mine. I have had it easy. Born, as I was, into the world that the sacrifice of that generation had bought us. We owe them a great deal.

What I have written so far does not convey the man just the epoch changing events he was involved in. He was quiet until he’d had a drink then he would talk about anything. He liked music and his tastes ranged from Steve Earle to Joan Baez taking in opera and Leonard Cohen along the way. 

There was something unformed about my father:

Always tip the barman when you first buy a drink,

that way he’ll serve you before all the others.

He made his way through this world, survived the war.

Returned with tales of food and opera

that he only ever told when the beer was in him.

I tried to probe once when I was a child,

to tap the depths of hidden heroism:

It must be hard to kill a man…

He laughed and said it was easy to fire back

when someone is shooting at you.

On reflection, as an adult, I am not so sure,

some men freeze.

My father was up for anything, a rough neck,

a rugby league fan, a man among men.

I often wonder what he made of me…

But I know he smiled when he read a poem about his life.

What I have written so far does not convey the man just the epoch changing events he was involved in. He was quiet until he’d had a drink then he would talk about anything. He liked music and his tastes ranged from Steve Earle to Joan Baez taking in opera and Leonard Cohen along the way. like father like son...