Picture Postcard Poem by Ben Slade

A father leaning
A son hanging
on a gate overlooking farmland
wrapped against the winter chill
Weak sunlight
lending a golden photographic sheen
to the stripped fields
framed
by skeletal hedgerows

It could be any year
Any century

The father's hand outstretched
Pointing
No encompassing

Son this will all be yours one day
I leant against this gate with my father
as he leant against it with his before him
Though maybe it was a different gate
he says laughing
But seriously
you will lean here with your son one day

This is someone else's story

I feel that we're close
You and I
Me leaning
You hanging

Though I have fond memories
of the land I grew up on
it was never destined for me to work
and I can't hand it down to you
It will all be sold soon

Your grandfather and I don't get on so well
His father disinherited him
Your mother left me
and like my father
I was to blame

What have I ever given you?

A broken home

A life in front of the TV
behind council estate walls
not of my choosing
because I forfeited my right to be with you

Inconsistency and indiscipline

Images of my own violence

and perhaps an inherited mental illness

What have I got to leave you?

If nothing else
know that I love you

and that I will fight for you