Remembering a man I didn't really know

A Grandpa Unexplored

                                For Crawford Ross

I see you rocking forth in your favourite

                chair,

flicking the second or third match to light

                your pipe,

laughing at a joke you do not hear, much less

                understand.

I wonder what the years have given you

                (the outhouse

gone, but not forgotten) and feel the widening distance

                between us

is a cancer-causing moat I cannot cross. Your

                fears and tears

withholding every fact, its place uncovered only

                by an old potato spade.

Saucered tea and Shetland ponies keep warm memories

                Retrieved alongside

trains and bacon-fat and crib’ (why did I never

                get to play along with you?)

I miss you even though I never shone your shoes

                or walked the back road past

the family cemetery hand-in-your-hand. You pulled

                away before I knew that

I should get to know you. I’m empty in the loss

                all your ‘cogitating’ was not passed onto me.

Did you ever hear The Call to Dance’? *

© Catherine Woods 1999, 2017

(* The Call to Dance by Leahy © 1996 

Crawford Ross died in 1983.)