Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     So, Dad, I know I’ve done a few things you don’t approve of. Leaving, you never do that.

     ‘Never break a promise’,  that’s what you used to say to me when I asked you if we really could go to the zoo on Sunday. We always went and I always knew we would.  A promise was for keeps.

     The day I enrolled at Brownies - that was special. My new uniform, you teaching me to knot a tie, then reciting the words, ‘I promise that I will do my best, do my duty....’.  Every week you checked to see if I’d cleaned my badge. You bought me a tin of Duraglit for that job. I’d pull out a piece of wadding and rub until the yellow wool was completely black and after I had wiped my smudgy fingers on a piece of your old work shirt, I’d polish the badge until the oval imp seemed to dance as it shone. You’d inspect it before I left home. That’ll do you’d say. My enrolment badge shone enough for Brown Owl’s inspection.

     As for work, you know all about that, and kept faith with hard graft for security. You always paid your bills on time. That was more important than adventures.

     Before I existed your life had adventures. If I had known you and all your adventures then! World war made you a prisoner, then you, who taught me right from wrong, stole salami from a German guard and laughed when ever after two soldiers guarded the food.  One less to fight at the front.

     You were the man who tried to escape five times and made it to Switzerland on the sixth attempt. Unimaginable, my Dad, a sort of Polish Steve McQueen, or at any rate the character he played in The Great Escape. In the end you wouldn’t escape. You chose to stay.

     Sometimes promises get broken when you’re a grownup, you never taught me that. Still, I haven’t left you, have I, Dad? As you lie there in your personal Poland, I promise I won’t leave you. I hope you can leave me to rest in peace.