Poem 301

A few mummy and daddy issues here (not mine), someone caught in a figure of eight cycle of his unresolved childhood marring present relationships and present losses and abandonments returning him to the past …

( I love the image of the mother as a figurine angel with a chipped foot – flawed, battered, martyred – the wasteful bird of the father, and the boy/man’s anger and desire for revenge only making things worse as he finds himself repeating his father’s example … going about my father’s business as in the Paul Kelly song … )

Wings Of Ash

In the supermarket down amongst the frozen peas
if I stumbled on a woman's face
    would I be any nearer
to knowing what's going on here?
if my work took me to other cities
and they were all the same as this one
could I ever be sure
I'd returned?
                           my mother is an angel
with a chipped foot
my father a wasteful bird that helped her
limp into heaven
                                   in these wild streets
crawling with hedges
I hunt a woman white wings folded together
in the wreckage
she cuts her finger to give her child
     a drink
the child cries for more, another finger

                       the woman's wings are ash
                       the wind lifts

I throw a stone up
at my father
                         only damage
my mother's foot