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.
Discussion about this post
No posts
A lot of your poetry is so playful and light, but this… my goodness! So deeply excavated and wonderfully complex. Loved all the emotion, the moving snatches of specific memory – “The folded piece of warm toast pushed through the car window”. What a full-stop to your year here.
WOW. right there with you.