Minstrel

ON MY FATHER’S DEATH

It is said of Yeats I think

That

What instruments we have tell us the day he died was bleak and cold

Well then the day you died,

‘Twas a roaring storm

That shook the foundations of the entire offshore platform

And made men at sea pray to God to spare them

When an iron structure with roots in the sea bed

Waved in a cruel waltz that made the hair on your head stand

With the anemometer pirouetting in an eye boggling spin.

Yet in me I could not connect it

Till a phone call the next day to say

"Prof. don mud"

Marking my entry into another phase of existence

Some insist it was my initiation to manhood

Was it?

All I knew

As I tried to find the pictures

To understand it with

Was that

Daddy was dead.

 

©2001 Dotun Adejuyigbe

August 30, 2009 Posted by Tomi | Dotun, guest post, poetry | anenometer, daddy, dead, death, father, foundations, initiation, manhood, offshore, storm, Yeats | 7 Comments