Sunday, November 29, 2020

Riptide climate matters

 




Proud to have work in this important #ClimateMatters issue of Riptide Journal, many thanks to Editors Sally Flint and Virginia Baily.
 
The issue is free to download, but for anyone having difficulty accessing the site, here is my poem:
 
Letters to Dad 
 
I write to you, Dad, who will not read my letters,  
who memorised The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  
and knew by heart the one-eyed yellow idol,  
was never idle but for the hours mined 
 in front of the hearth with the tv casting shadows  
on your big chin. Your chin, I have inherited. In age,  
I have yet to surpass the numbers of your birthday  
the last time we shared cake, a tell-tale crease  
curves from cheek to cheek regardless, shapes 
 an image of myself in your face 
 when you moved to land your fist. 
 Did you feel like you were punching yourself?  
One letter away from dead,  
does guilt hang weighty like an albatross,  
like me aged kid with my arms around your neck, 
 asking you, Dad, please will you read to me?  
You told me two-dimensional stories out your head,  
had imagination and could build sheds from scrap, 
but sat on my homework because it remained flat for you, 
who, when I choked, held me upside-down, 
like the book you couldn’t read,
 until rind fell from my mouth like pressed flowers.  
 
 
Rachel Fenton 2020

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