EARTH
AND SKY
(for my father)
How old was I
When you carried me up on high?
I can still feel the thrill,
The weightlessness of flying,
Thrown up like some insubstantial toy,
Your new baby boy,
Propelled through the air
To be caught every time, without fail,
Fielding a little bundle of fun,
Your first son and you.
Stood on your strong, safe shoulders
Arms reaching up to steady me,
Mine reaching down to you
We are in our beloved garden,
By the Victoria plum tree
My birds eye view of you,
Your earthbound view of me
A blur of grass, tall as the trees,
The birds my friends, we fly together
And speak the same language,Though we perch in different
branches,
Whilst you stand with your feet firmly planted on
the ground. |
EARTH
AND SKY
(for my father)
Never again will I orbit your world so completely
But like a satellite set adrift,
Trying to transmit pictures back to base,
Pictures of an unseeing future and a nebulous
present,
I drift in lofty planes.
Reception never was clear,
Communication a two way struggle,
Neither component entirely compatible,
Though undoubtedly of generic stock,
Yet somewhere on the periphery of your magnetism
I shall be drawn back towards you
And you know one day my little bubble will burst,
But you may no longer be there
To catch what you recognize in yourself
Coming hurtling back down towards you,
Crashing down to earth at your feet with a bump,
Instead of into the safety of your outstretched
waiting arms.
.....................................................................David
Bottomley
|
