'Impresario'

Impresario

If I think of my father now,

I see a figure on an oil-drum

at the garden end, coat spread

over his shoulders in the late evening sun,

like an impresario who’s just been told

first night could conceivably be last

or a pundit warned to avoid the purlieus

of Lingfield and Kempton Park.

Chin on hand he stares at the ground

where he began, though elsewhere,

the Llanelli mines—for all of half a day

in family lore, after which he upped

and resolved to discover Xanadu,

which is always one hill beyond

and anyway at last dissolved into Sedgley,

Ettingshall, Roseville, none presuming

to be the prize for tonight

or even the passing moment. 

 

Follow That Dream,

sang Elvis in a pub where dad

once bought me a Vimto, parked me

in a room where the tv didn’t work.

Each day of his foreshortened life

his dream minced and gurned

and blew raspberries.  Leave him so, then,

on the drum as the sun turns to other lands,

shopyard grease on his palms and cuffs,

Xanadu still in his eyes. 

21st June, 2020, Father’s Day.