Ben Slade - Picture Postcard

A father leaning
a son hanging
on a gate overlooking farmland,
Wrapped against the winter chill,
Weak sunlight lending a golden glow
to the fields framed by the skeletal hedgerows,
It could be any year,
Any century,
The father’s hand outstretched
pointing,
No encompassing,
Son, this will all be yours one day,
I leant against this gate with my father,
As he leant against it with his before him,
Though maybe it was a different gate
he says laughing,
But seriously
you will lean here with your son one day.

This is someone else’s story.

I feel that we’re close
you and I,
Me leaning
You hanging,
But though I have fond memories
of the land I grew up on
it was never destined for me to work
and I can’t hand it down to you,
It will all be sold soon,
Your grandfather and I don’t get on so well,
His father disinherited him,
Your mother left me
and like my father before me
I was to blame,
What have I ever given you?
A broken home,
A life in front of the TV
behind council estate walls
not of my choosing
because I forfeited my right to be with you,
Inconsistency and indiscipline,
Images of my own violence,
and perhaps an inherited mental illness.

What have I got to leave you?
If nothing else, know that I love you
and that I will fight for you.

Ben Slade

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/picture-postcard-2/