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.
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