Frank

Cherry

By ralph

Sat, 11 Jan 2014
  • 771 reads
3 comments
 

To be Frank,
and to tell you
about it.

On the night he died
I was in Leicester
performing poetry.

I exclaimed the word
‘Dad!’
and the
audience laughed.

As a child,
and with
those blue eyes
he was
my hero.

He could
make me howl
to dizziness
with funny faces.

Make me wonder
at the grace
of racehorses,
pigeons,
and George Best.

As a young man
he troubled me.

Like Thatcher
hurt me
with words
of discouragement.

His weakness.

But today.
In this earliness of mourning
I’m trying to love him.

Oh Frank.
When we last spoke.
It was of John Hegley,
and Man City’s
away form.

‘Dad.
Dad.
Dad!’

Certificate U
Poem
East of the Heart
Biography

Comments

Submitted by scratch on

Me too.

ralph, this is a good'n.  Read it in York please!

 

Submitted by scratch on

7th 8th and 9th stanzas are where this poetry finds its blood.  

 

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Good poem Ralph. What is it with Dads?. I remember as a child of ten a rare long walk to the newly built Wembley Central Shopping Centre and back with mine.I was so delighted to have him all to myself and pleased that I could keep up with his long strides. And, much like yours and I think I am probably in the same age bracket as yourself,when I was a young  adult he could be so scathing towards me with his impulsively abrupt humour. These days the old man is 87 and I am 57 and we get along much better though I live over 200 miles away.

I am thinking of you, in what you demonstrate so clearly in your poem, to be a time of heartache    Elsie