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ROLLING, ROLLING - NEW POEM

 

ROLLING, ROLLING

 

There was a painting, in a small oval frame

In my grandmother’s house, of a sailing ship

 

Crossing the ocean, and I can’t remember

The waves, but there was also another

 

Frame, a photo, of a boy in a sailor suit,

Who wasn’t her, but her father, I think,

 

And they were on the kitchen wall, right by

Where she once dropped me when

 

I was little, so my teeth cut through

My lower lip, and I needed stitches,

 

And that still perceptibly shows, barely,

And they’d drink tea and have bacon sandwiches

 

Slathered with HP sauce, and when I was four

Or five, and they talked about the old country,

 

Meaning Ireland, or my grandfather’s London,

This was in Montreal by the way, actually

 

My Uncle’s house but he let her live there,

Because my grandfather had died on a golf course

 

Under a tree, during a storm, where he taught

The game to wealthier men, of heart failure,

 

I would look at the painting and imagine waves,

Dark rolling dark waves, and how cold

 

How terrifically deep cold and lonely

The waves were, and how lonely the sailing was,

 

And I’d feel a chill run through me, that felt like

A future, where I would have travelled far

 

From the warmth, and hilarity of those occasions,

To a place of dark waves and rolling dark waves

 

On top of dark waves, and it felt like England,

I thought that is what England would be like, then.

 

 

NOVEMBER 17, 2020, LONDON

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