WHEN GIANTS TOPPLE

A love poem for my parents, but that I cannot show them

I watch my Giants topple, 
Altitude flagging,
Years caving increasingly uncertain silhouettes,
Dragging heavy scuffed baggage and
Wielding battle-scarred, rusting, obsolete shields.
Love-laden, stubborn,
Heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.

I watch my Giants topple,
Remember the rise and fall 
Of his black hair in step
With his confidence,
A handsome vision in navy
Turning heads
In busy streets
And office corridors.

I watch my Giants topple,
Recall the orange lunchbox love-dash,
Her long blue silky dressing gown 
And slim tanned legs,
The folded piece of warm toast pushed through the car window,
My ungrateful shrug surely a heart-stab
As her warm breath kiss-wafts have-a-nice-day,
Turning into an ephemeral love mark  
On the fog of hastily rewound glass.

I watch my Giants topple,
Braving unsuitable staircases,
Courting disaster for the sake of autonomy,
Stumped by technology that is also
Becoming increasingly bewildering to me.

I watch my Giants topple,
As hearing aids screech,
And a dead foot drags,
And a tendon-damaged finger droops,
Because of too little done too late by too many too busy people,
And I damn them all to hell because…

I watch my Giants topple,
Literally.
See him crash to the ground like an ungainly old tree
Whose roots can no longer sustain irregularity.
And the toxic debris buffeted in the tsunami of his mortification
Shock-floods me,
Because he is grounded without assistance,
And now,
Even as she downgrades the incident
To a mere oops,
Endless disaster scenarios
Play on a loop
And my throat burns with bile.

I watch my Giants topple,
And I wonder what will happen
When something happens,
And what sort of mick-mack it will take
To turn the gazillion piece ostrich puzzle
We forfeited in return for a nebulous 
Semi-entente cordiale
Into something gentle and serene.

I watch my Giants topple,
With fear and love and dread,
And I hope I will be strong enough,
Child enough, eldest daughter enough,
Enough enough,
To hold the makeshift rudder,
And point our entire argumentative, gesticulating embarkation
In the right direction without anyone else
Chucking someone else,
Possibly even the lot of us,
Overboard.