‘Okay, Dad, okay!
No need to have a cow!
I know I said I’d do it
But I was talking
in general terms.
I didn’t think you meant now!
How come everything is a row
With you these days?’
I’m amazed.
I ask ‘ is he insane ?
Have aliens from Planet Bebo
stolen his teenage brain?
Don’t they know junk when they see it?’
A little humour eases the pain
of my frustration
but what hurts more
is that again and again
and again
I swore I’d never do this -
put my son through the same wringers
the system and my Dad did me.
I’m beginning to see
the problems he had
I find my brain choking
on its own ambivalence,
unable to speak what I think
trying too hard not to sink
to a tirade
but worse than that,
afraid
to renege on a hasty threat
or show the tenderness
I feel sometimes
in case I seem weak.
So we seem to speak
less and less.
I guess that’s how it goes.
I suppose it’s all part of ‘letting go’
like they say
as if
we were only holding on somehow
and these bonds of flesh and blood
would simply fall away -
like they wouldn’t need a blade,
and a sharp one
I always wondered
why the midwife always said
‘plenty of towels and hot water’
Now
I haven’t the first idea
what to reach for
or how
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