Poem for dad

My dad died.I hope you will forgive my use of the blog for this poem. I hope you find it some benefit, especially if you have lost someone close. Goodbye dad. You are here with us in the now. Loving you always my father

Composing a poem for dad, for me

Composing a poem for dad, for me

For my sadness, the tui, bright and flashy

as a black diamond

doesn’t care.

Preludes rising like your joy

and diving into anguish

Sometimes the Hutt breaks its banks in grief

and its tears anoint statehouse porches

Othertimes you see it has lazy acceptance in esses

You see it confined, know it swathed stones once, forming this valley

We sensed your restriction pulling away at the covers and tubes

And things they said for your own good

Mum dreamed of you at her back imitating her S shape in sleep

I wake with Chopin aching three mornings

The left hand is the carrier and the right plays its own tune

Mum woke and thought you were there

The right hand clasping left, her own.  

And there you are in the lament of right and wrong in my brothers,

the song, a great oneliner, an empty lazy boy and lifeless widescreen

We wound up following the Hutt River to that field where earth says welcome

Black granite, cold as dark suits, stabs up out of the ground

My friend Hugh tells me that the Books of the Dead tell what it’s like

My family like the idea that Christ himself mentioned

No inkling here so far, though faith be our torch with which we look

-except for the Monarch against the white hearse and

again, like a lolly against Mt Holdsworth fair and stark, sheeted and silent