Last week it was the Helter Skelter’s fault
My daughter’s never been and almost nine
Her Dad is scared of heights, and therefore baulked,
There being no one else, the job was mine.
We take it slowly, climbing up on high
My eyes send mixed messages to my brain
We sit down on our mat, heads in the sky
And in my middle ear, a twinge of pain.
I only need to turn my head too fast
A day when I'm a little overtired
And all the fluid singing in my ear
Goes out of tune, the rhythm all cross-wired.
Combine that with a corkscrew fall at speed
Trying to slow with feet pressed to the sides
We shoot out at the bottom on our knees
Get up unsteady, marvel we survived.
Next day I hold her hand to school
Occasionally I brush the garden walls
That seem to move towards me and away
Outside I go to kiss her cheek
Just miss her nose,
"You kissed me on the eye," she says
Then smiling, sure-footed, skips away to class,
I turn and helter skelter my way home.
I breathe my father’s smell all around me
In this house
His chair
Mug of tea balanced on the wooden arm
Precariously
Holding our breath
We pray for it not to fall
And make him face his frailty.
I breathe my father’s hair
The bathroom where he spends hours
Like a woman
"All the perfumes of Arabia!"
My mother says sarcastically but with affection.
I breathe my father’s sweat
The garage
Old wooden drawers sticking
Then slamming open with a rush
Revealing rusty tools he pretends to use.
I breathe my father’s skin
The bedroom
Where I rub ointment on his back
With love
And with distaste at his wasted body.
I breathe my father’s flowers
In a graveyard
In a quiet town
The brown polished stone
Standing near the yew tree
Belov’ed and alone.
He’s all around me …. still
Sweat and smell and breath
Despite my mother’s frantic cleaning
Hair cells, skin cells
Kaleidoscoped with all the others
Who lived in this house …..
This country …. atmosphere ….. beyond —
Gandhi, Michael Collins, Ché,
Martin Luther King, my father …..
Such important people swirling in the ether
© Trish Leake 2006 