Eye
Found one
Hidden
To passersby
All except for the hawkish
Eye
Found five
One for us
Four for them
Leave the rest
Within the nest

Hungry
Like a hatch of fledglings
They would perch on the branches
Of a woody apple tree
Heath cocks
In a cackling clutch
Squatters
In squirming squads
Stealing
Spies
Squawking
Squalling
Squabbling
Nestlings
Devouring apples into their crops
Dropping apples into their cupped
Hands
Picking and pinching
Macintosh
The squire pointed his shooting stick
Shooed
Away
Under the staring stare of a strawberry blond scarecrow
Uprooting
A feudal field of sallow yellow
Spuds
Nestled into their empty pockets
Packed into the space of spacious wellies
Planting
Them into old army mustard satchels
Stuffed with spuds
Stuffed with spies
Filled
For the filling of mom’s baked apple pie
Back home
You are the apple of one’s eye
Mum’s
The word
Like you

Grandma
Slides a smile to the eldest daughter
Your dad would spend his time
Alone
Drawing the time away
With sketching and etching
He would landscape our room
Carpet
Into a mosaic of pictures
Laid out
Framed into a room
He would arrange his drawings onto a carpeted
Montage
A pictorial tapestry
Exhibited with artistry
Ships to sea
Birds to sky
Doodling away
Emptying time
On a tinted day
Cartoons
Colored his life
With bubbles of laughter
He would illuminate his world
With a tin box of watercolors
He would create his own landscape
Exhibiting his imagination
In the public school
In the local newspaper
On the telly
But never
In the School of Art
Under painted
Daubed with class
Brushed aside
In a wash of miss opportunity
He became the caricature
For the working class
Art
Would always be a doodle

Play
Would be a battle
On the carpet
In front of the roaring fire
The leading soldiers charged into battle
While the color bearer led the soldiers
In a leaden parade of pomp and circumstance
Lead
Soldiers battled
Shooting
Falling
And dying under the deft fingers of your combative
Dad
With Churchill Ian oratory
Would assemble his regimented
Fort
And his armed forces
In preparation for combatant
He would parade his warring troops
Into army formation
Soldiers stood
Outside the militaristic fort
White cowboys and Indians
Mixed with the armored tanks
Horses stood
Next to a squadron of RAF spitfires
Loaded with Swans dead matchsticks
The cannon was ready to strike the approaching enemy
Oh No
Was the battle cry
It would parade
Onto his parade
Four padded paws
And all purrs
Crossed his line of fortification
Clawed to the carpet
The combated cat would not leave
The field of battle
But the bellicose cat would leave
A disarray of dead lead
Soldiers
Surrounded the cat
While Tippy surrendered to him
With love
He would pick up the conciliatory cat
A hug
A pat
And march him on his way
With a dishonorable discharge
Tippy sashayed down the carpet

Saturday
Matinees at the Coliseum
Starring
Tom Mix
Hopalong Cassidy
Topper
Flash Gordon
Cartoons and the Little Rascals
Tricker
Roy Rogers
Gene Autry
Flying on Loony Tunes
Riding and laughing
Across the silver screen
Reels roll
Turning life into black and white
Episodes
For the child who sat in darkness
Movies
Was Technicolor
In the 50s
Children licked away
Time
With creams of delight
Sitting and watching
Laurel and Hardy
Food fight
Free-for-all
Flurries of flying flans
Flotilla of floury flax
Falling
Fluttering and floating
Onto frosted faces of fringed foolery
Film over
Faces
Festooned with felicity
Leaving
A fuddled film
In a fluency of flummery
The End
Began
With Saturday night
At the Princess Picture show
Star stuck
Your dad’s artless eyes
Would follow her lambent performance
Silhouetting the silver screen
Framed
In his view
She was an alluring beauty
Hidden
Behind a perfect profile of desired darkness
Subdued
Into silence he sat with steadfastness
Longing
And yearning
For her
Elusive but enamored
Touch
Was within his guileless grasp
As he sat right behind

Evelyn

Was his first love
And she would sit in the front row
Balcony
Like your dad
She would attend the picture show with her parents
We would watch
His hopeful eyes roll towards her
Starry-eyed
His silent voice would stammer
Onto a speechless marquee
I love you
Was written with a smitten stare
You would smile at his besotted
Desideratum

Innocence

Pleated into a pristine
Short thigh skirt
Checkered with pure wool
A blouse
Tailored into white soft linen
Spotless stockings
Knee high
Folded over into a crisp border of white cotton
Nylon
Fitted the unblemished skin
Of her slim school girl legs
Slenderness
Graced the sensuality of her unworldly
Body
Contoured
Into a coddling coziness of a warm woolen cardigan
Skin like silk
She cocooned into her emerging small breasts
Where she would cuddle him
Into her unconditional
Smile
Singled
Smile
Eyes a soft sixpence of sunshine silver
Speckled
Into a hazel mottle of playful green
Nestled
Under an auburn wave
Of long curling eyelashes
Eyes
Summoned his stare

Flagellated with flirtation
She spoke
With an angelic smile
Friends
In school
After school
He would steal
His first kiss
From her tempting offertory
She would host
His exonerated spirit
With love
And laughter
She would leave
Her mark

Smallpox
Years later he saw her
Standing at the bus stop on County Road
Saddened shock
Scarred her smile
Startled
In sadness
He smiled with sorrow
When he saw her standing there

In the sunset
He would smile in her shadow
Sharing
The memorable smiles of her sunrise
Eyes
Wide shut
He screens the past
Into a filtering capsule of perfection
He shades the past
Into a fleeting capsule of innocence
Sealed in
He savors the sweetness of his sanctified
Schoolgirl
A long lost love
Of coveted innocence
Leaving
Love in its wound
And a scar that could not be healed

Saturday nights
Were evenings of anticipated fun
For your dad
It was also a special time to share the show
With us
And his elusive Evelyn

Now
The old picture houses
In time became the dodo of the sky
Thanks to the telly
They became the chameleons of the present
The Princess
The Coliseum
The Queens
The Bedford
And the grand old Astoria
Gone
Or changed into Bingo Halls
And the Coliseum
Is now the home of the Everton Football Club Association?
They did not get our wedding church
But they did not get our honeymoon house

Good Day Sunshine

Drive the pram
Down the street
Push the pram
Driving delight
Up the street
In the sunlight

Nestled
Under privet of green shady leaves
The fat Persian cat watches
Under a sundial of sunshine

Stretching shafts of stalking shadows
Lock in the little
Girl
Shackled in sobs
She stands in sadness
Behind her solitary confinement
She waits
She calls
For her driving date
While gently peeking behind a sunless gate

A solicitous grill of shifting shadows
Unlock into streams of sunlight
Leaving
The slats of shade to
Open
The little girl’s sunny gate
Picking
Her up with squeals of delight
He took her

Into the sunlight
Up the street
Driving delight
Push the pram
Down the street
Drive the pram
In the sunlight

Nestled
Under privet of green sunny leaves
The fat Persian cat purrs
Under a sundae of sunshine

In a promenade of endearment
He would drive little Miss Sunshine
And all the other young children
In a pram that was sunbathed with
Affection
Shone from a sheen of smiles
As he pushed their pram onto a pavement of sunlight

Children were his natural

Attachment n

1. Affection or regard for 2. An accessory that can be fitted to a device to change what it can do.
Collins Large Print Dictionary 1996

Tethered
To an outlet
The cord was taut with tension
Moving
It carried its defective part
Into the present
It pushed its past
Collecting
Residue of sedentary dirt
Picking up the past
It stores the present
Bagged
Into a burden of sedimentary dust

Filled
With rage
It moves with tenacity
Sweeping
It scours the skewed surface with its soulless screech
Searching
For the soundings
Of its splenetic soul
It slams
It strikes
In a sortie of shocking savagery
It had taken a sudden turn
Bad move
Sheer
Off
Stop
Change

Directions

Contact
Connect
The alienated attacker
With an atoning accessory
Attach
Love and understanding
Open up the closure
Release the aperture
From its exposed passage
Secure and support
The openness of its enclosure
With forgiveness
Time will fill its soulless sack
Into a soulful

Vacuum n, Pl

Vacuums or vacua 1. a space, which contains no air or other gas. 2. a vacant place or position that needs to be filled by someone or something else: the army moved in to fill the power vacuum. 3. short for vacuum cleaner. – vb 4. to clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner.
Collins Large Print Dictionary 1996

Sleep
Sucked up
The daytime
Work
Sucked up the night
Time
Swept away
Leaving
Little space
For his father to fill in
Your father’s day

His father had little time to play
Dusk
To dawn
His diligent father
Drudged at the droning dock
Driving his derrick
Dawn
To dusk
His deprecatory father
Was a template of his father’s temper?
Trapped
In the twilight of their temperament

Your dad
And his father
Had good days
And acid days
Teaching
Your dad to ride a bike
Was a disastrous disappointment
For both of them
Teaching
Your dad to fix a bike
Was a disastrous disappointment
For both of them
Doing anything together
Was a disappointment for both of them?

Fault

Father
But to be fair
His father had a lot of stress on his
Plate
If stressed out
He cracked
And if you faltered
He would find that fault
Brittle
In collision
Emotions strained
Displaced
Falling apart
Colliding
Slated with pressure
Vent
With anger

Molten sweat would pour
Down the folded fissures of his father’s forehead
Boiling
Into a roaring soaring
Eruption
Explosion
Alighted into a sudden rage of ranting fury
Shuddering
Your sensitive dad would tremble
Under his father’s seismic quake
Lava
Of cold sweat would surface
Onto your dad’s leaden body
Flowing
With fear
He fled
With fright
Tears would tremble onto his ashen face
Quaking
And shaking
He would wince
With fearfulness
His distressed body would shrink
Into a timorous bundle of trembling nerves
Cowering
With cowing
He flinched with fear
In shock
He shook
Like the quivering wing
Of a dying morning dove
With aversion
He would recoil into the outer rim of his father’s
Tectonic rage
Followed him to the edge of his cracking
Courage
Prevailed
In remission his father’s tempestuous crustiness
Cooled off
Plugged
With time
His father’s temper became somewhat
Dormant
But he had already deposited
His temperament into a residual pool
Of petrified faults
Where it waits
To be evoked
Or better still
To be expunged into extinction

His father
Tried
Without gain
He lost
His only
Son
Tried
Without gain
He lost
His dad
Did do a lot for him
With the little time
That they had
Together
They were often at odds
With his dad
It was the worst of times
With me it was the best of times


When we all went to the Seaside

Summer Sundays
Summer holidays
At the seashore
At the seaside
Dressed to the nines
Off we went
Grandma’s as always
A dapper dresser
Slim
In a vested summer suit of tweed
Blue
Eyes
Pale gray under the shadow of his trilby
Snappy
Happy
Linked
Together
Arm in arm
Under the mask of his Irish charm
Pierhead
Right ahead
On the double green Decker bus
And on to the Pierheads landing stage
Standing
Like a gaggle of groundlings
Waiting for

It

On the wharf
Under a steely structured entrance
Was a mighty wooden drawbridge
Arched
And attached
With heavy linked chains
It dropped
Down
And out
With a disgruntled thud
Stretched
And sprawled
With a blank plank
Look
Before you step onto the wooden gang blank
Crossing over
In a caterwaul of cross talk
Looking down
Into a cattle-grid of cavernous
Sea
On the other side

In a huff
It waited in a spurning spume of sputtering