On the Occasion of my Fathers Death

Where had he gone?

The mad old coot

paterfamilias

dope smoker

lover of Cagney, Edward G, Bogart, Raft

Pre-code aficionado

Acid casualty

Poemless poet

hero/villain/antihero.

Movie gangster Big Bill.

A lover of life

swept into death.

My dad.

Where had he gone?

How had he stopped?

Stiff and white on his

unimagined death bed.

What fright, what fight had taken him

during the night?

What dream had stroked him

across what line?

I sat on the edge of the bed,

utterly alone in his room

held his white hand

and asked the ancient, trite questions:

What was this nothing whose hand I held?

What had been lost to turn him into this?

Where had he gone?

RIP (27/11/47 - 18/10/21)