I missed your birth - the only
one of the four I did not see.
The celebration of your infancy
was overlaid with care,
so now there are too few
early photographs of you.
But images in my mind,
I rework upon the page
And of such sights and sounds
I do not coldly say
This helps me to remember.
Stowing it in some old book
To put away and scarcely look
Upon. More important at the time
Was not to note things down -
The sound of footsteps in the night
When a toddler finds the need
Of warmth in the dark.
The heavy, swollen child,
Greeting me after a week away,
Face and body quite transformed
From what I'd known. The strain told.
But we recovered you in time,
And I thereafter carried you
Many a mile upon my shoulders
Till you grew too heavy
Tugged at me on country walks
Complainingly, then followed, close,
Reluctantly, in sisters' steps.
Childhood music thrived,
And then like many another you
Sought to appropriate the world,
Lands to which I'd never been,
Mexico, Bolivia, Amazonia,
Then London and the City.
Now you outstrip your father
In the ways of the world.
I offer still a helping hand,
But needs inevitably grow few.
The boot has long been off
My ageing foot. The time will come
When I grow heavy too,
Feel the need to lean on others.
God forbit that I should drag
Along on country walks, but the least,
(Or was it the most?) that I could do,
When as a child you leaned on me,
Was to comfort you.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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