Poem for my Father |
By: Bridget Joseph |
Bridget Joseph writes following the death of her father, Terence Horsley, a journalist and pilot killed in a tragic gliding accident on Easter Sunday afternoon in 1948.
After that fatal Sunday . . . and a funeral, my mother pulled us from our beds.
‘He’s come home. He’s landed.’, she shouted dragging us to the open-wide window.
An old birch, rooted, unmoved, shaded our crystal bird: a glider stencilled on the lawn.
Cradled in a tree, the staring moon unleashed her tricks in the still of night: the tracery of wings, the stroke of the tail; slender, suspended.
He was there. In the cockpit.
‘Back at last - but you’re bloody late.’
The oven, left on to keep his supper warm. Blue pyjamas laid out.
We raced downstairs calling calling
ran barefoot over the lawn; clawed at the ground, cold and drenched in the play of shadow.
White-veiled in dew, we scattered our tears but only the kiss of his cinders was there:
his moon-life slipped through our fingers . . . |