Brandon Poem by Grahame Lockey

One day, I took you to school on my shoulders, punch proud.
At first light, the heat was already as thick and itchy as wool,
and everything had the colour of a photo that has seen too much sun.
You swayed with the rhythm of my gait, little hands holding on
by twisting my ears as if about to hoist a heavy trophy.
We entered the fading field no ball would bounce right on
where at once children, mothers, maids rose from every puddle of shade
to reach out for your China cheeks, your foreign ringlets
and to say your name, while, chin on my crown, you gazed
down upon them with an expression I know no word for
because it is a generation too big for a child – the sort of look
I’m caught with when I feel a pang of fondness for you – like
when you used to slip shod feet into the barges of my heavy shoes
and clunk a sliding walk to me. Walking in your father’s shoes
or gazing down at outstretched hands, both require balance –
innolibrium I think I’ll call it. So, as the brandoning crowd reached up
for you and you smiled down with innolibrium, I wondered
if you were not born for something great, if you would not have it
in the shoulders to swing people around you like a cloak.
Messiahs got people out of puddles – messiahs, healers and you.
I had to hold you aloft just to set you down, and as you swept away
with your curious, chattering shadow, not once caught up in it,
I shook my head, not just to get the blood back in my ears.
You are the apple of my eye. May you never pick it.


(2003. Philippines)