ON REACHING 70

 

My father and I aged 8 months in June 1957

(Old B&W picture cleaned up and coloured by my brother using AI)

ON REACHING 7O

 

Three score and ten,

An odyssey;

Seven times;

An end-in-itself, they say.

 

On reaching Ithaca,

Memories,

While I still remember,

Of demons and angels,

Mistakes and victories:

To own, to have learnt from,

To recall without irony,

Cynicism or hate.

 

My children’s birth,

And my birthing of many,

Each precious, unique

Moment in time,

Baptised with tears,

Of joy.

 

To have loved

And been loved;

To have wandered

Amongst Sassanians,

Circassians, Armenians,

Seljuks and Kurds.

On an Indian Ocean isle,

Incense and Dragon’s blood;

That filled the perfumed niches

Of a palace in Isfahan.

 

n exhalation of my wonder,

Of what had gone before.

 

On a ferry across the Euphrates

To Diyarbakir

With the tobacco traders;

I inhaled deeply

Gave thanks

Then found my way home;

Prodigal:

Forgiveness,

From the real heart.

Seventy;

 

An end perhaps?

Perhaps not?

 

Blessed by a family,

Who put up with,

Miasmic mists,

But also,

When the westerlies blew,

A father’s and husband’s love;

Setting them free.

 

Oh! 

The celebration of watching

My grandsons grow up

Into beautiful men,

Pam would have approved.

My mother died at seventy-one:

Ithaca plus one.

We had to let her go

Into that beyond

Where her faith led her.

 

And the rational me

Cannot follow;

Yet somehow in this world,

All at present seems irrational,

So, who really knows?