Meeting Ground – celebrating fathers
For the 2020 Father’s Day edition of Meeting Ground, we present poets from New Zealand and Jamaica sharing poems on fatherhood.
We celebrate fathers in their many manifestations. Happy reading from the curators, Ann-Margaret (Jamaica) and Shane (New Zealand).
Lost Dragon
No old photo in the china cabinet
No cracked porcelain teapot.
No heirloom chopsticks to keep in the drawer.
From Great grand-pappy
Zēngzǔfù 曾祖父.
Freckled mulatto Beatrice
Silky plait down her back
Basket on head
Chanting macka back and sprat.
A confident stride
A sensuous sway
Ignites his attention
In a familiar way.
Great grand-mammy
Alien to his world
Of Great Walls
Giant Pandas
Yellow Mountains
Forbidden Cities
Zhao Yun, ‘Charley’
The Indentured Labourer
Didn’t ‘save sugar’
But turned Shopkeeper.
Wholesale and retail
Dry goods on credit
Mah Jong evenings
Barry Street, Kingston.
The stars aligned
For an unlikely encounter.
A short-lived romance,
Like a supernova.
A yellow-skinned baby
Without daddy’s name.
Never counting in Hakka
Yi-Ni-San, 1-2-3.
Never donned a Changshan
For a special occasion.
No tales from the village
Tián Xīn Wéi.
No flipping through the Jiapu,
To take a look
At the ancient ancestral book.
No family reunion to keep in touch.
Cousin strangers, unknown to us.
No dancing with Dragons to start the New Year.
An elusive bloodline is what we share.
Angella Prendergast (Jamaica)
--------
Warsaw Concerto
For my father
you said
it was the world’s most difficult song
to play
and I think of you
a boy battling on
fields of cracked ivory
fingers barely stretching to cover the octave,
galloping chords,
the staccato beat
of ten thousand notes
lined up for war
Every day
you sat in that room
with paint the colour of sky outside.
Every day
you disciplined your soft hands
forced them to bend to the piano’s wires,
emptied your life
of prepubescent dreams
looked for keys.
You heard your father tell you
again and again
it was his favourite song
but only played perfect
the chords crashing down
again and again
in silent arpeggios around you
and the sky outside greyed
as you started over
piano/pianissimo/forte/fortissimo
the notes colluding/colliding/collapsing
and fighting
again and again
until one day you
stopped
and listened
and you heard the sound of your father
smiling in his sleep.
And now you sit in this room
with paint the colour of sky outside
your hands wrinkled over mine
as you tell me
daughter,
take your time,
it’s the world’s most difficult song to play.
Rene Liang ( New Zealand)
-------
Prodigy of the Man
My father arrived me on earth as assumed—with his trademark
doggerel strut. Into my mother’s arms he passed me with that
same honeysuckle sweater and $5 haircut. He was there for
my first bike ride and first football game; my first tooth missing
and first nickname. He gave me my first train set when I was three
and introduced me to the sky. He brought me to the birds and
showed how they fly. My father, to be honest, has always had
the same type of life about him. Contagious, the same joke to end
a question; same question to mark a curiosity. Do you think
that’s a wise thing to do? is still his catchphrase. His advice is still
the one I take above anyone else’s. As time will pass, friends will
go and enemies had, I’ll always thank my dad
for showing me such a wild existence; for ‘taking it on the chin’.
My father has and will guide me to an infinite future,
an unlimited junction.
Jamie Trower ( New Zealand)