Untitled Document

To Be Frank

for FS

Thank You / Thanks / Ta very much!
January 5th; writing letters of ingratitude.

Thank you for my part-share in a space-hopper....
Thank you for the clothes that my Mum likes...
Thank you for the Lego ( despite it being
quite obviously incompatible with the rest of my bricks )
Thank You /Thank You *insert present here*.

I always wrote to you in the same way as a child.

A ten-line address padded the page;
a vast exercise in kid cosmology in which I hid the fact
that I did not like my gift.
The felt-tip drawing of a knight in armour ( that narrowed the margins )
was the closest I came to breaching this faced-up formula
of telling you

I was Gawain on his charger
battling the elements
that Boxing Day afternoon
you carried me shoulder-high in the snow.

I noticed the re-appearance of the slick italics
when we sat together, two men, in your hospital day-room last year.
I was rattling on about cars, Guinness,
the mentionable merits of Staff Nurse Stevens
my eyes leaping from my watch to the telly.

You noticed them too, and out of the blue you told me
you treasured being my Santa Claus,
saving December in sixpenny bits.

Once again you were lifting me up.

You drew out the pictures you kept in your heart,
my face that afternoon you got lost in the blizzard.

Then you told me all that the doctors had said
giving me my chance to try and be frank

to spit out a thank you
we both knew I meant.

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