Lights! Camera! ....Action! ... Poem by Michael Shepherd

I’m setting up this scene more carefully
than any other; it’s the key scene in
that film that’s forever unreleased:

we’re sitting there, quiet,
comfortable in each other’s company;
there’s an anticipatory pause as
I turn to her and say
‘You’ve been a brilliant mother…’

and it doesn’t matter how she replies;
I’ve said it at last…

perhaps if I do the retake with
every time, more care in detail
(faint background music? No;
that would make it artificial…)
do the retake, how many, ten, a hundred,
a thousand times? it would
come true..

And now I’ve set that up,
I can’t imagine setting up the scene
with my father.. even now,
I cannot bear to think of those
pale blue eyes fierce with an anger
I could not bear to meet;

where’s the script..? whether it would
shatter his world if I said (I can’t even
say the words in mind…) :
‘You’ve been a…’

or worse: if he softened, instantly..
and in a gentle voice, began to speak
for hours on end, all he had hoped
to make this son of his, but how..

.. or if (and here the script
is stained, unreadable…)
he were, too late, too late,
to say what fathers must all hope to say
one day, to grown-up sons..

but who cares a flunkey’s muck
for films about self-pity?