Occasions when your father saw the rising in your eyes

Watched you coming in to the light.

Reading it all like any canny kid

Caught him catching you coming up,

Coming on, coming into it

And the impression this made on you both.

 

Such are the contours; so is life handed on.

 

Maybe slower this year after his traumatic brain injury (car crash).

Slower and perhaps less often.

And all the while you’ve been raising your game:

Higher, faster, further.

 

Still, you and he; sometimes the stillness.

 

Camera’s in free-fall – you’re feeding to Facebook live.

Frenzy of shouting, screaming, shrieking

Did you ever have stand-up rows like this?

 

But here there’s no side to take

’Bout boys or clothes or staying out late

Only your shock and awe, hearing your father is no more –

No more than a parcel of flesh and as many police bullets

As failed to find their way out of his fat, black body.

 

Take all the noise you need for now, any number of decibels

To shield you from the quiet of the grave.

Only recall and return one day to the still of the light,

And the lively look in a father’s eyes, upon his daughter bright.