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Jim Burns

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Family

I’d be out walking with my father,
and we’d pass a stranger, and my father
would nod at him, and I’d ask,
“Who was that, Dad?” and he’d reply,
“It was your Uncle Frank,”
and that was the end of the conversation.

Or sometimes, I’d see a chimney-sweep,
swaying slightly with his bike and brushes,
and he’d say, “You’re Jimmy’s boy,”
and I’d agree, and he’d press a coin
into my hand, and then ride off, drunkenly,
the soot drifting from his clothes.

And once I was taken to Liverpool,
and shown a large house where my father was born,
and told how the family business collapsed
due to my grandfather’s drinking,
and his generosity to everyone in the pub.
“He boozed away a fortune,” my mother said.

But I still don’t know the full story
of how my father left home in the Twenties
when his family, good Catholics all,
told him to stop seeing my Baptist mother.
I just remember a stranger and a chimney-sweep,
and a father with very little to say.

 

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