Said my father one year

‘They are no sooner made

Than they just disappear.

I’ll build you a snowman

And I’ll build it to last

Add sand and cement

And then have it cast.

And so every winter,’

He went on to explain

‘You shall have a snowman

Be it sunshine or rain.’

And that snowman still stands

Though my father is gone

Out there in the garden

Like an unmarked gravestone.

Staring up at the house

Gross and misshapen

As if waiting for something

Bad to happen.

For as the years pass

And I grow older

When summers seem short

And winters colder.

The snowmen I envy

As I watch children play

Are the ones that are made

And then fade away.

Getting On

The husk may crack

The chalksticks creak

The brain confused

The pulse is weak

But Time is your own, at least

And that beast, Passion

No longer screams to be fed.

Getting Off

I closed my eyes, held my breath

and tried to lie quite still

Refused to believe that death

applied to me, until

Just Passing

Just passing, I spot you through the railings.

You don’t see me. Why should you?

Outside the gates, I am out of your orbit.

Break-time for Infants and first-year Juniors

and the playground is a microcosmos:

planets, asteroids, molecules, chromosomes.

Constellations swirling, a genetic whirlpool

Worlds within worlds. A Russian doll

of universes bursting at each seam.

Here and there, some semblance of order

as those who would benefit from rules

are already seeking to impose them.

Not yet having to make sense of it all

you are in tune with chaos, at its centre.

Third son lucky, at play, oblivious of railings.

I try and catch your eye. To no avail.

Wave goodbye anyway, and pocketing

my notebook, move on. Someday we must talk.

In at the Kill

The contractions are coming faster now.

Every ten minutes or so

A crush of pain made bearable

Only by the certainty of its passing.

Midwives come and go.

At nine forty-five, a show.

It must go on. The floodgates open,

A universe implodes.

There is no going back now

(As if there ever was). Shall I slip away

And start a new life?

Instead, I do as I am told:

‘Push, push. Stop, stop. Now push.

Come on, more. The head’s coming.

Push harder. Harder. Push, push.’

Then out it comes – whoosh.

Uncoiled, I am thrown back.

For some reason I twirl.

Doubledizzy, I steady myself

On the bedrail. ‘It’s a girl.’

And so it is. My first.

Having witnessed three sons bawl into view

With the familiar appendage of their gender,

I am unprepared for… (what’s the word,

Begins with p and ends with enda?)

Amazed, not by any lack or absence

But by the prominence of the lack,

The perfect shape of the absence.

Flashbulbs interrupt my musing,

The theatre fills with flowers.

My wife leads the applause,