27 years

hard to believe it's been 27 years since you stared at my
burgeoning 13-year-old breasts from your hospital bed,
marvelling and horrified at the same time, at your child so
quickly becoming. then heralding a new world
with your ashes scattered over those roses,
a world that did not include your blue eyes,
filled with love and future. i have wandered,
fatherless, these years, and in times of hardship
- and there have been many - still recall you
with hot bitter tears: the throwing of balls to hands
like sieves, your laughter at how i threw ‘like a girl',
the vision of your speckled skin against white sand,
your shy half-smile at a child's bright prattling.
but, girl no longer, your leaving was childhood's
death knell, and the world since has never be so kind,
so loving. father, if you had stayed, what poem
would i have been?

Published in small packages literary magazine, Australia, 2002