Watching Waves

We holidayed in Norfolk, walked
on seaside hills, my mum, gran, aunt and I.

We sat in a café, watched the tide
get high upon the shore.
My sandals were clustered with wet sand
from the beach where I looked out to the waves
and asked are they swans mummy? The peaks,
the crashes of water were white,
they dot dot dashed in little white
windswept plumes upon the sea.

The white seagulls swooped to catch
chips from the floor and sat on the seawall
squawking – ska ska ska – before flapping back to the sky
to shit on the man outside in a baseball cap, eating
a sausage butty on white bread. That seagull’s
wings looked like a feathery white boomerang
blending with the white overcast day, the greying horizon,
the grey sea, the white waves.

The wind was harsh and stung
my face – my father striking me.
The sea shhhhouted and shhhhushed
at the sea wall, they met and collided
and crashed. Everything moved
but the floor, the sea wall. The concrete
was sad and felt so large
next to the hills, the long-walk peaks
that were bent-backs when I looked up into the sky.

I ate nice hash browns in the café.
I sipped milky tea from my kiddy cup.
I showed mum the scar on my finger,
she kissed it better.

Looking At The Photographs

of a small boy clothed in paisley harem pants
and rainbow suspenders, suspended
in sepia-toned time –

of a small boy hiding
in a wash basket, held inside it
an egg in it’s cup or a cat
in it’s cradle –

a baby photo with baby
cradled in mother’s arms, it’s feline tongue
testing new air, lapping it up. Milk –

there is the young boy in stilettos that are tall
black and too big, he stands, Bette Davis
with a boa of silk scarves around his neck
like unravelling VHS tape. Here
is the photo of the boy unravelling the VHS tape
he is entangled in the lacquered black
VHS tape, he chews it and touches his foot.

I look at the photographs –
I see my mum in one that is discoloured,
been felt time and time again
by grubby hands. She is flinging
paint at a wall, baby-blue, the boy
is knelt longingly beside her
making hand-prints, baby-blue, on the wallpaper,
on the weathered floor boards, on the white door
where we measured my height till I was seventeen.

Dad, Two Ways

I
I don’t have a dad.
Haven’t had one since I was two.
It was a tumour in the heart
that took him away.

I like to think I remember his face,
it’s chunky roundness and the smile
he had, the happiness plumping his cheeks. Mum says
the last time I saw him he smiled and kissed
my forehead, I was two and he is gone. He

is sitting in the frame near the glass clock
in the lounge, smiling and holding me
as an infant. His eyes are protective,
gazing at me as if I was expensive,
as if I wasn’t going to die one day.
I put flowers on his grave
once a week, pink anthuriums, vibrant hearts,
I replace them if they wilt,
if they lose colour.

I do have a dad,
in the ground, in that frame.

II
I don’t have a dad.
Haven’t had one since I was two.
It was a selfish lust that took him,
that keeps him.

I suppress the face that has never smiled, the mouth
that never even forces a friendly laugh,
the lips that never arch at the ends –
except for once – uncomfortably – in the one Christmas photo –
I nod and remember
Mum says I am so proud of you

I nod and I remember the 18th Birthday card message,
the flimsy thing from Clintons, the solitary
from Dad
the sixty-nine pence sticker stuck on the front –
I nod and I think of that photo from 1994 –
I am an infant I am in his arms my head is looking up to him –
his head is turned away from me – trained devotedly on the TV –
the photo is filmy and turning brown with abandoned age –
I keep it in a box that will burn when he dies.

I do have a dad,
biologically.