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Giles Goodland

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Joint Second Prizewinner: Giles Goodland

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I get back home late with the definite
feeling of a cold climbing in through
my throat and waiting for me to sleep
and my two-year-old tugging my leg
because he’s afraid to be on his own even
when someone’s in the room and the baby
in my arms expostulating and I have to put
one or the other down because of the phone
and it’s my brother, we haven’t talked
for a while, and he says Do you know
why I’m calling?   I don’t, and as he speaks
I’m surprised because he’s not one
to keep a date in mind but he says
It’s twenty-five years tonight, and then
I know what he means.  Twenty-five years
since our father died and here we are,
still children, sheltering in a long shadow
and I don’t really care but I do care it’s
just I don’t have time to think it,
it needs to be written already in sleep
but yes it was this time of year, a
shaky November, all of us putting on colds
like anoraks and dad, he can’t walk
to the end of the room and the egg
glistens on mother’s arm as she comes
from the kitchen and doesn’t shout at us
to keep the noise down and that night
we all choose not to know
until mum knocks and I let out a long
breath that feels just about empty now,
his spirit has left the room and left me,
a clutch of children tolling
the ropes of my arms, hoping at least
to see them out of the stage of  fear,
this wanting that won’t let them stand alone,
until sleep crawls in like a dark animal and
leaves the shape of what is left, what has left.

 

Page(s) 70-71

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