Absent Father – Childhood Dreams

Wildest dreams of Silverstone, I saw you win the race.

Fist clouted air, but I never saw your face.

You brought champagne and flowers to a seven year old dream,

I know you came; you knew how much it would mean.

First mate upon your dream ship. A Merchant Vessel spent;

Swallowed the essence from a telegram you sent.

A box of cards to open in a teenage romance,

Tracing letters where I know your hand once danced.

Flew with you to Africa and saw zebras on the plain,

Real, in colour, father, brought to life again.

With babe in arms, a mother. I looked and thought I saw,

A beaming grandpa peering through the door.

Now life without the hero who’s eulogy I see.

Very much missed by wife, kids, grandchildren. And me.

Two lives you lived. The one you knew; with wife and family,

And the one that I created and kept alive with me.

So, am I to mourn you? To kill the childhood dream.

Allow your death to tarnish my imagination’s gleam?

No. I’ll never say goodbye, since we never said hello.

Kinship passed us by like a wing of wicked crow.

I never will imagine you lying in a grave.

Nor deny your presence and the love you gave,

To bring this soul to being, to let me have my dream,

Of absent father hero on whom my whole world leaned.