Today is the Greatest Day

22/7 = Pi
Neon light bounces — on fragile bronze towers;
dazzling yellow-white light — drenching
cold sap-swollen trees, like warm honey
dripping through fragrant warm half-light
unfolding leaves and erasing the streetlight.

Seven Sticks Burnt
Rolling beneath gilded temple-spires
of commerce and traders in his Deities’ guns.
Curled, like a caterpillar, snug and cocooned
in a rug, wrapped in newspapers: a foetal-man.
Last saw his kids in ’64. Now keeps his memories

3 of them
in a stained gabardine pocket: caresses it daily -
now curled with frayed edges. Smudges of numbers
and names on the back, remind him like half-thoughts.

–Hot light drills to the false skin –

lifting him through
layers of yellow-tint edged clouds, and a fragrance of Spring.

Falling and then
seeing them run in a circle. A circle of town-light,
the smiles ecstatic sparked him, lifting his soul
from the ledge toward a spangling firework spray

- of wonder -
Hot city sun-glare peeled away dreams
of a dazzled half-life.
Shedding his false skin of wonder:
a chrysalis crackling alive to mutate.

Ivor Griffiths 2007; Published in The South Poetry Magazine, Autumn 2007, Issue 36; Dedicated to, and inspired by thoughts of, my children: Rachel and Mark.

Remember what I said in the car?

Remember what I said?

If you don’t see me it isn’t because I don’t want to see you.

I’ve been to Court and everything.

Don’t believe anyone who says I don’t want to see you.

They’re liars.

And they are.

DAD