Whenever I went into our local library
I would take out a book for my dad.
An adventure yarn. Something to do with the sea.
Occasionally, I’d bring home one he’d read before.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he would say, ‘it’s a good ’un.’
And settling down, sign on for the same voyage.
It wasn’t laziness on his part, but a kind of fear.
Libraries were for educated people.
Full of traps. Procedures. Forms to fill in.
They would notice his handwriting wasn’t joined up
So then they would try and catch him out.
Ask questions about Shakespeare. About proper books.
***
Although a stevedore (Mum preferred that to ‘docker’)
And landlubbered all his married life
He’d have passed four-square on seamanship.
Because he’d been to sea himself when young
And would often talk, with some regret,
Of how he’d nearly jumped ship in Fremantle.
He loved the solitude of the bush. Its stillness,
And the sky a blueprint for eternity.
‘And the names of the places. Now that’s poetry!’
I picture ourselves in the outback
The nearest library five hundred miles away
Him, married to a girl from Manjimup
Me, trying to make sense of alphabet soup.