"dear appropriated spot"
William Wordsworth
My father whistled his favourite tune,
A bicycle made for two,
in the morning, opening up our home.
His music was the tinkle of a spoon
in a glass of Andrews Liver Salts;
the running water in the bathroom shower.
His smell was of Anchor cigarettes,
that mix of tobacco smoke and his ablutions
with Palmolive soap.
There was in his footfall, his limp,
Cork foot, his men on the estate called him,
a relic of childhood polio.
His boy’s voice, from the past,
trails across the water from
the coxswain at Shrewsbury,
crouched in the stern
controlling the rhythm,
the pull and splash of oars;
a chevron on the River Severn,
where I, alert,
fish with this heron.