The Ritual

I see you now,
Expectant, as I open the car door
And join you in the front.
The quiet familiar smile,
The firm honest handshake
Given before we set off
(None too evenly)
For the coffee shop you liked so much:
Your weathered hands
Negotiating the accustomed route,
I chatting away, then chiding myself
For not allowing you to concentrate more
When we come to a light or some turning;
You easing yourself out at our destination, uncomplaining,
I awkwardly protective of you,
My father,
As you make your unsteady way
Through the distant winter car park.

Our conversations seldom touched on the past-
You’d moved it aside, then pushed it far behind you.
So it was the grandchildren,
Interwoven with the many disappointments
My flagging career must have brought you,
Of which we talked;
That long-wished-for trip to Italy you’d make one day,
The plants and trees you’d tend once more come the spring,
I wishing for better weather than that prevailing then;
And sporting matches I hadn’t seen,
And places where we’d never been,
And symphonies you’d never dreamed or heard of
Provided theme and variation
To the main stream of our thoughts.

Once you told me how you’d been given
A photo, the only extant one
Of the mother you’d never known,
And how you’d placed it
Beside the one of your wartime bride
On the table next to your bed
Where,
Comforted by remembrance,
You dreamed your way through
Solitary nights of abbreviated sleep
Watched over by its spectral presence
That reshaped itself with each day’s growing light
Into familiar features and your smile.

Our coffee sipped, the cups set aside,
An old soldier’s eyes transfixed by time,
Conversation metamorphosed into dream,
We rise, the noonday crowd around us,
And retrace our fortnightly way
Through sad afternoon streets,
As memory settles on my shoulders
And time steals away from you,
My father,
Our chats locked away forever
In a chest stowed deep inside me,
And I, in memory, still expectant,
Waiting, where we used to meet.

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