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

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

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"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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