One day Daddy
(the man in Mummy’s bed)
on his way
home
from school of
darling daughters
once perched
the prettiest little bird
on the cross bar
of his bicycle
as they flew
in fusion
a confusion of
darling Daddy & daughter
down Dobbins’s
Biddy’s Hill
time whistling
through their curly hair
the thrill
of wind & speed
suddenly crashing
to a halt
greeting the telegraph
pole out side Sheean’s
the shoemender’s shop
as if a
comma
had become
a full stop.
Carted off to hospital
by an hysterical ambulance
as the little girl
ran all the way home
clasping all the terror
in her tight little hand
nothing not even
a grazed knee
to show for all
the drama
to tell her Mummy
that her Daddy
“...was after crashing
the hill
on a bicycle
to hospital! ”
My mother
worrying the day
to death
but
he could be
visited so
I visited
him in Ward
No.7
where people
not well
lived in bed
& prayed to get
better
me searching all over
for the familiar
smile
that set fire
to my imaginations
but Daddy
was a mummy
all bandages
& groans
& in my nervousness
I gulped down
all the grapes
I had bought
for his recovery
but he moaned
that it was OK
so I devoured
everything in my fear.
Here now
in his great old age
the scar still
laughs
across his cheek
as somewhere inside him
the memory lives on & on
of him
crashing the hill.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
My brother and I once crashed a ditch this same way, with me astride the bar down the middle, in front of him! O U C H, and my scar didn't smile! ! Not one bit! ! But what a memory trip for me this was! Loved this one, and thanks, Sweet Donall, for taking me there!