The gingerbread silhouette of my father
Is absent today I’m perspiring
Or you could say shimmering over a coastline
In a row pegged-out, colour coded
Three weeks’ worth of hearts
A Freudian couch with sponge cake perhaps?
An arrow, a narrowboat, arrowroot blot
A stair-lift stops, temperamentally
I decline to use the honesty box
But am generous for life-guards
On a good day, only on a good day
A magazine before dinner before, later, the paper
The evening smell of tobacco
‘Papa?’  I hear; to which I answer ‘yes, Nicole?’

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