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16th June, 2023

Friday Poem – ‘My Father’ by Tony Curtis

Photo of an abstract shadow stretching out across a lapping wave

Ahead of Father’s Day on the 18th June, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘My Father’ by Tony Curtis from his New and Selected Poems From the Fortunate Isles. Tony’s debut novel Darkness in the City of Light was recently shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize.

My Father
My father is a shadow
growing from my feet.
This shadow grows from one minute
past the noon of my life
and trails me like water.
My father is mending all fifty-three of his cars.
He works in a garden shed
by the caged light of an inspection lamp.
The red glow at his lips shows constantly
small and fierce like an airliner overhead
or the startled eye of a fox.
Ash falls onto the greased parts
of the dynamo.
He hawks and spits through the door.
His hands and nails black with grease
come out from the old paint tin
he has filled with petrol.
Like rare birds they rise
their plumage glistening and sharp
spilling green and blue and silver.
Those hands that my forehead meets
briefly and shivering.
Those rough hands I run from
like the borders of a strange country.