Towards III

This one's from 2008 and first appeared in the also late lamented Smiths Knoll poetry magazine, as did Marking Time.

My Dad did love word play, and if it was funny once, well - it was funny a hundred times! His parents had a gardener called Willoughby and this had amused him since boyhood. 

Things can be hidden amongst the oats in the pan, amongst the coats on the bed...

Willoughby Porridge For Breakfast?

I put oats in the saucepan

and think of my father – the puns

whose repetition lit up his face.

I fumble through the mornings,

through all the afternoons and evenings

in search of something hidden there

as if beneath a pile of overcoats at a party,

thick, heavy, tricky to distinguish in the dimness.

How I long to open the window

and cast them out into the wind,

watch them fly like huge birds 

away and away darkly to the horizon.