As a result of living in America, Dad would sometimes
refer to himself as Pop. His mother dropped by the
bungalow just once in the 1960s.
Grandma arrives while Dad’s at work.
She is sat with Mum, myself and my sister.
Dad lets himself in. The dog barks.
Dad comes through to the living room.
They clasp eyes, they clasp bodies, they step back
and the rasping talk begins.
A surging fury of spectacular speaking,
sparking, blazing, amazing
crazed cackle
of the two
locked
back,
clocked
into shattering unity.
Shocking, knocking on twenty years since they last cast eyes
upon the eyes and the size of each other.
A right old trembling tear-drop tumbling ensues.
Embracing, facing this deliverance from near-on two decades of out-of-touching
hanky-drenched, the French is freed.
The frog in the throat croaks again.
Dad’s secret identity is rumbled. Mother and child united.
Child and mother-tongue, united.
To Luton from Nice, to release the unspoken.
A voice broken for the second time
and climbing to the top.
Snap
Cackle
and Pop.