12 Feb 2002
Here is what he loves right here and now:
His little boy gently creating and selecting
a riot of coloured squiggles on paper.
His little girl rioting creatively selecting
a roundabout to play on next.
Their faces bursting with love
For the moment.
His ex-lover who cannot return herself.
Here is what he loves from a distance of space or time:
Kaituna Valley and Okaines Bay.
Grandad who met his boy not in this life.
Stars; stones on a jeweller's velvet pad.
Studying a bird with wonder in
A field of grain.
Sweet fuschia stamens in Autumn.
A cottage on a hill
The path moss-lined
Shell-strewn sown with
Forget-me-nots.
Breasts in the window.
Yellow lines.
Here is what he waits for:
Music of youth arriving bit-by-bit
from light-speed fibres.
His boy to close porcelain eyelids
fourty-four minutes after bed-time.
The right time.
A return that may never come.
Here is how he waits:
As a sail catches the breeze
Turning to embrace it.
As a brave man meets his foe.
Fruitfully not wasting the waiting.
Here is what he holds:
A pen a mouse mouldy bread for ducks
Three feijoas "to eat at the park" and teaspoons
Roundabout handles
His children
Precious memories
Futures.
Here is what he knows:
The universe is too beautiful
to be changed by him
To face his own mistakes is harder
than to face others'
He alone stands in his way
The cynic loses out.
Constructive
Selfishness is better than
Destructive selflessness.
Software writing books.
Love.
His children's mother.
*
(c) Cameron Wilding 2002. All rights reserved.
-----------------------------------------
Composed while visiting my ex-lover and the mother
of my son. We had been separated four months. Flicking idly
through a feminist mag from the ’70s, I found a poem
that I thought could do with a male response. This is mine.
Each stanza is modelled off the original.
