My Father's Hands

My father’s hands are made of softest leather,

Sand and paper as they rub together.

Door jambs round his nails to scratch and pick,

Drystone hands with callouses to click.

My father’s hands hold putty knives and spades,

Carve motorboats in sand, and sharpen blades

on whetstones — penknives, chisels, secateurs.

My father’s hands peel oranges and pears.

My father’s hands could stroke a gentle night into my hair,

Or grind my head far down into my neck

Or hold my fearful heart till calm,

Or flick a burning ringing in my ear.

My father’s hands are making rich brown soil

And greeting worms he once would demonstrate.

My father’s hands’ one final act of toil —

Making compost by the graveyard gate.

My father’s hands’ last will and testament —

A share, a portion of a tender home,

But genes, a more enduring document,

Leave me the legacy of the man

My father’s hands.

Little Blue

The hand of man

has drawn thickly

over the lap

of this land,

and

into dark corners

it has pushed

concrete and asphalt

like vaseline

before its setting thumb.

And on this hardboiled

lumpen rock

I grind my feet to dust.

But beside the 
clanging grey

of this combed road

a pepper of blue -

little blue -

picks up the sky

and throws it back.

No matter where

I find my feet,

no further away than a rat

will be 
some fragment of blue -

regardless of the grimy day.

Look now

and you’ll see it too

- little blue -

the ripped corner

of a wrapper,

a button,

the lid from milk,

full fat,

a rejected smartie,

a frenzy of massacred

chip forks,

and the elbow-pleated straw

from Terry’s

Ribena.

Attic

This one speaks for itself...

So from this attic

window

which has

 spectacularviewsacrossthecity

I have watched

fireworks

and have seen

a rabbit

escape its hutch

magpies

newly released

homing pigeons

fearful of flight

populating the roof opposite

a blow-job

(I was surprised, too)

  

the consumption by fire

of a storehouse

the consumption by fire
of a tyre dump

an elderly Asian woman
in her kitchen

combing her long grey hair

while upstairs

her balding husband gets into bed

and the young man

- whose job was blown -

climb out of his attic dormer

and urinate on the roof

a velux on the world.

The Right Time

Dad said

“When I need to know the time

and haven’t got my watch,

I just close my eyes and

picture the clock in the kitchen…”

It was a round clock

with a blue face

and white numbers

and white hands…

I can picture it too…

“I can usually ‘see’ the right time, then,” he said,

“in my mind’s eye…”

I tried it

and it did seem to work.

Sometimes it was twenty to four

or half past eight in the morning…

the clock was always five minutes fast

but I learned to take that into account.

But later Dad said

he didn’t really do that…

so now I don’t know whether

it's ever
the right time.

Toilet Brush

Hayley asked

Who brushed the toilet?!

Who brushed the toilet?

It was me.

I had brushed her toilet.

I had stood there

 wondering

what to do about the

great

     skid

                  mark

down the side of the pan.

So I pulled the

hedgehog brush

out of its plastic holder

And scrubbed - 

and the flush and the brush

performed their magic.

Me,

I did it.

But now the

questions

flooded my head.

¿Why was she bothered?

¿Did she have her own special way of brushing the toilet?

¿Was she saving the toilet brushing for another day?

¿Did she have a special Toilet Brushing Day?

¿Was it something she looked forward to?

¿Had I ruined it for her?

¿Did she really mind?

¿Would she have minded if she had seen why I had brushed the toilet?

¿Did she feel bad that someone else had brushed her toilet?

¿How could she tell that someone had brushed her toilet?

¿Did she notice now that a STAIN she had noticed earlier had now gone?

¿Was it a problem that the brush was now WET –

and possibly

…sullied?

I raised my hand

Everyone else went quiet.

It was me –

It was me.

I brushed your toilet, Hayley.

Oh,

she said.

Gladys

Family games...

When I sit on Dad’s Knee

and he’s finished doing

“This is the way the old men ride…”

we sometimes do

“Say ‘Gladys’.”

I pinch his nose and say

“Say ‘Gladys’,”

Dad and John, 1960

and he does -

but it comes out like

‘Glodys’

or ‘Nglaris’.

or I pinch his lips together so he can’t open them

and say

“Say ‘Gladys’,” –

‘Grydyf’

or I squeeze the sides of his mouth together

and say

“Say ‘Gladys’,”

“Glollyth."

Best of all is when

I pinch his nose

and squash my hand across his mouth

and say

“Say ‘Gladys’”

and his eyes start to get very wide

and his cheeks start to puff out

and he starts to wriggle about

until I nearly fall off his knee

and then there’s a funny sort of

splurgy sound from inside his

mouth

“Brrdadzziff”

and then there’s usually too much spit around

to do it any more

and he looks a bit red

so we stop.

Grandma’s name is

Gladys

but that’s not why.

Lessons in Lego

I was approaching three when my younger sister was born so I'm thinking this must have been one of my earliest opportunities to experience sibling rivalry...

Jess was born

upstairs

with the door shut

and Cousin Win

came to look after us

downstairs.

And when Jess had come

Cousin Win told us

we could tiptoe like mice

up the stairs and see

our new baby sister.

And Mum was there in bed,

and Dad,

and there was this baby

in a black carry cot

and Mum said the baby

had brought us things,

and if we put our hands

in the bottom end

of the carry cot

we would find the things

she had brought.

I didn’t know

how a baby

could get to the shops

but Mum said I needn’t

worry about that.

And there were things -

I got a little box of lego,

blue lego

roof pieces.

It was all right.

Then John opened his box -

when I saw what he got

fireworks went off in my head

and it was like

there was suddenly

a big crack in the world

that I might fall into

right in between me and Mum

and Dad -

John got

little yellow curved bits of lego

that made a fantastic round tower

when you put them all together.

Yellow bits

not blue.

Curved bits

not roof bits.

And they said the baby

was called Jessica Mary

and that she was the baby now

and I had to be her big brother

and teach her things.

I thought I should better teach her about

lego.

I expect she brought Kate 
something too

but she was six

and I didn’t want it

it was probably a doll

or something.

It seems my parents weren't too concerned about choking hazards in those days either!