Father, Standing in the Kitchen

Again you are in my dream
standing in the kitchen
young, robust, healthy
beside the counter
hair slicked back.
You speak in simple phrases
lobotomized with special
needs, white nerve fibres
severed, calm, harmless,
your world so easy
for you now, free of worry
about your health, money,
finding jobs, the never-
ending garden chores
of domestic life, frustrations,
rising heat in fixing things,
those little nagging fragments
of a life's that's left you now.
I'm right there wrapped up
inside your simple smile,
wonder what I've done,
holding the scalpel that
has set you free, 
while releasing me.
I want to hug you now,
your simple young hero soul
hidden back in time
when the British
friends laughed and called
you such a handsome man.


© 2008 David Fraser

Meeting at the Diner

Inside the diner of my dream
my father sits;
my mother long packed up and gone.

I enter, move toward his booth, but
sit at another table, in the centre
much exposed.
He is so strong, muscles
ripple from his shirt.
He talks across the space
at me of how she
drove him to this place,
gets up and makes the move
to sit with me.

We take the time to eat
our shrimp in lemon sauce,
each silent in enjoyment 
with our food.

I somewhat agree, but
man to man, I look at him and 
closely know
he's looking forward to and
being with, all those other women
for whom he saved his smiles.


© 2008 David Fraser

Footprints

Stooped, and shuffling man,
with many others gone before you,
taking their violence to the earth,
leaving you, stubborn, tight
void of philosophies and metaphysics,
consumed and consuming
little things,
digesting just the headlines
scraping only the surfaces 
as it has always been;
your bruised face, a black potato,
seeming to be waiting
for each uneventful day to pass.
I glimpse your shadow
trailing down the long green corridor
sick and vomiting;
the footprints of your slippers
in what you had for lunch.


© 2008 David Fraser

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