Doors

To visit Melbourne

re-opens a door

on a life,

on a man –

your father, son.

Well, it would.

When I visit

I always stay

with you, dear,

and I remember….

He’s dead now.

It’s 23 years

since he went.

How on earth

can that be?

As for you,

suddenly you’re 50!

The blonde curls

of the boy

no longer exist.

The old doors

to the past

open and close.

We’re still here.
New doors open.

Linked to Weekend Mini Challenge: Doors at 'imaginary garden with real toads' and to The Poetry of Three on facebook.

Oh You Robinson

To my son David

Oh you Robinson boy!
No, Robinson man —
over 40 now.
Though you bear
another name
the genes tell true.

At certain stages
you could have been
my brother’s younger twin.
He said he’d look across at you,
thinking, ‘How can I be
over there when I’m over here?’

In other ways
you recall my Dad,
a man who loved dancing.
He too was the most
patient, fair and tolerant of men,
and as widely loved.

All his life
since the age of 10
he had a gammy leg.
It gave him pain
but it never
stopped his dance.

Your injury, I hope,
will be less permanent.
I suppose there must be pain
though (like him in that, too)
you don’t complain. I pray:
May you keep on dancing!


NaPoWriMo Day 16

Birthday Greeting Poems

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 11
(After a discussion of the awfulness of flowery greeting-card verses) write or rewrite a greeting card poem so that it has meaning to you, or at least is funny.


It just happens that there are two important birthdays in my life today - my Firstborn Son's 42nd, and my Third GodDaughter's 18th. So here are the poems: both meaningful, one (mostly) funny.


Happy Birthday To A Wonderful Son

Thank you for being a wonderful son.
Thank you for not exploding yourself
that time you put a match
to the not-quite-empty petrol barrel –
but merely singeing your eyelashes off.
They and the missing patches of hair grew back.

I can still see your tiny naked feet
running happily across the lounge-room carpet
leaving footprints of brown fence paint.
You were delighted that you’d been smart
and taken off all your clothes before
you decorated your whole body. So was I.

You always had such a kind heart.
When you were only a few years older,
your father’s workmate Ron was truly amazed
to see his brand-new car, parked in our driveway,
improved by a free paint job – the brown again.
(Of course, you did have some help from other kids.)

At only 11 you found true love
and for years afterwards stayed in your room
playing with your instrument: your first computer.
As those years passed, your father and I
began to wonder if you’d still be there at 50.
But then at last you discovered girls.

Along the way you made luscious Pavlovas,
gave me helpful hints on my driving skills
and refrained from killing your little brother.
You were still a toddler when you begged
from the back seat of the car, “Mummy and Daddy,
please don’t sing.”  No doubt it was good advice.

We’ve had great talks at times. You’ve always been
wise, thoughtful and understanding. I like that you like
writers whom I like too and share my taste in theatre.
I like that you're now telling me which books are good
and which new shows. And even your furious corrections
when I forward the nuttier emails that go the rounds.

And it’s very sweet of you not to publish too many
of the poems and stories you write. It would never do
to show up the lesser talents of your mother, or my lesser
self-critical faculties…. Finally, I can’t believe you’re 42!
Or ourselves already so Senior. I’m sure you’ll be pleased
to know we’ve decided to move in with you next week.


Happy 18th Birthday!
(To my GodDaughter M)

When you were a baby
you crawled downstairs
headfirst, smiling.
You still plunge boldly.

When the young babysitter
couldn’t calm you,
sometimes I could.
I was more familiar, perhaps.

Now you surprise me with love
just because I’m your Godmother.
And you don’t treat me
like an old lady.

I have forgiven you
for throwing things at my cat.
You were only a toddler.
(Mind you, it took a while.)

We read each other’s
journals and blogs.
What we find there
stays between us.

You like to write, like me.
You like to sing; I’d like
to have a voice for singing.
We rib each other and laugh.

Today you’re 18, old enough
to toss down a legal Jack Daniels
and have consensual sex –
if you could figure out who with.

You’re old enough to vote
and drive a car. The time
is now. What was it you wanted
to be when you grew up?

Happy Birthday

Prompt: a poem about a painful experience or one involving some other emotion, without stating the emotion. I've written enough pain poems this year to last a lifetime! So this isn't.

On your very first birthday
what did I give you,
knowing I gave?

A long journey
twelve hours, exhausting.
The briefest touch of my arms.

And instant recognition:
you could only be mine,
with those family features.

I gave you
a mother too tired
to hold you long that first time,

one who couldn’t feed you,
but could later cuddle, talk to you, rock
once we got the bottle right.

Much later I discovered
other things I gave you
from the first –

a love of poetry
and the gift to write it
from my Dad and his Dad and me

and music, not from
but through me,
one of my mother’s talents.

Now you’re 41
in just a few days.
I can’t believe it.

It’s hard to know what
I might give you this birthday.
Usually I don’t, just a call

or an email. We always say
we don’t need words –
we who love them.

And these days it’s you
who finds gifts for me,
nearly always a perfect book.


"Happy Birthday" is the Midweek Motif prompt at Poets United for 19 March 2014.  This seems a perfect piece to submit!

A Boy's Will

(The next title in the Robert Frost Challenge)

A boy's will; how would I know that?
But I look at boys I've known
and think they probably didn't
will what they now have.

A child who ran towards life
ran everywhere, head up
laughing – how did he
become at sixty-four
the self-confessed curmudgeon
squinting into his glass?

The one who went exploring
into the bush at four,
who raced billycarts and scaled fences
and stole things, and always survived ...
what covered his scabby knees
in such conservative grey?

The tot with the owl glasses,
tiny astride a cannon,
but smiling safe and proud
beside his big brother and dad,
who dreamed of making his own pictures
with a camera – not words –
now spends all day writing,
except when his white head rests.

And the two I knew the best,
or thought I did?
That other child of laughter
other daredevil climber
loved stories of heroes with swords.
He spends his life at a desk.

The younger, with the smile
that got him whatever he wanted,
thought of a life on boats
and a perfect woman.
He travels by land and sky;
he travels alone.

These stories are not all sad.
Early desires change.
But a boy's will, what's that?
Peter Pan leaps and is gone.

Left: Boy 1. Right: Boys 1 and 2:

Boy 3 (Right):

Boy 4:

Boy 5:

The First-Born: Arrival

(The prompt is "First")

He took a long time coming.
Twelve hours of me panting
trying to find breath,
nothing left to answer with
when the nurses murmured,
'Why isn't she using her breath to push?'
no lung power to say
I had no lung power, I'd caught a cold.

Later I found the power
to yell and swear as the pain hit.
'Oh!' said the nurses, gasping
almost enough to push him out for me,
'What would your husband say,
if he could hear you now?'
They looked all of 16, the pair of them.
I didn't bother to laugh.

Then it no longer mattered.
I thought the next push
would split me apart
from groin to crown
and that was irrelevant.
If I could, I might have shrugged.
All that mattered 
was getting that baby born.

Dimly I heard, 'It's a boy'.
They wrapped him round
and laid him on my chest.
I was too exhausted
even to raise my head.
Afraid my weak arms
wouldn't hold him,
'You take him,' I said. 'I'm scared.'

'How can you be scared,' said the midwife,
'Of such a little scrap?'
His skin was very fair,
his few fine hairs almost white.
I dropped little kisses on his forehead
when no-one was looking.
As each kiss alighted, a tiny smile
twitched his lips and his eyes opened.

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2008

2/4/08