Buttery sun slants through the nets
Bootees kick into light
Dad’s dependable shunter’s palms
Guide to-and-fro at my back
Terpsichore clock hours bouncing blissful
From Bill Haley’s vinyl track
On the scarlet-lidded Dansette
Toddler pendulum, Dad rocks me
From kitchen cool to living room warmth
Up, lifting, back, forward, toes pointed,
Flying gaspy giggles, you trying to sing,
Floor tilts with subsidence
From mine-shafts burrowing
Blind moles under our valley
Dropped pencils roll from the south
Towards our cramped back yard
Its draughty outhouse, crunchy coalhole
Steam train rings on rails
Shudders the triangular under-the-stairs
Vibrates my heart-space with its presence
I don’t recall the Kennedy shock
When all the world stood still
Knowing where they were,
What they were doing.
I was ready already
For the Moon landing.
How quickly it came, like the end
To my sixties swinging
Earthbound then soaring through stardust
Orbiting before the plummet
Two years later, back on the ground,
I run my fingers over those hooks
Either side the jamb painted magnolia
Echoes of where I swung without cares
Where hospital bed now fills the room
With its pulleys and chrome
When the dark blood clot moved into ours
While I was sleeping
And ate my daddy alive.
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