An awkward outing with a separated father is recalled – and lived again – in this delicate sonnet, finds Carol Rumens
Access VisitYour afternoon pint; my Britvic pineapple juice;
a bag of prawn cocktail gaping in the middle.
The lounge at the Wig & Mitre was Daddy’s choice.
And then, at six, my taxi home; a cuddle
before I left you waving at the corner,
bound for my mother, our monthly weekend over.
And she would always seem a little warmer
Than when I’d left, and I’d be slightly colder.
How could I know what an alcoholic was?
The Wig & Mitre’s now Widow Cullen’s Well.
The snugs have been pulled out, the walls made bare;
but the place still has the same sweet, musty smell,
And I’m going in for a drink again because
I know I’ll find a part of us in there.
Growing up between “two countries, two cultures, two parents”, Rory Waterman deploys the grace and tact of the emotionally bilingual in his first collection Tonight the Summer’s Over. His speaker in this week’s poem, Access Visit, carries off various balancing acts. He’s initially an adult reliving a childhood experience in which the child behaves like a small grown-up; then he’s an adult helplessly gripped by a childlike need.
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a bag of prawn cocktail gaping in the middle.
The lounge at the Wig & Mitre was Daddy’s choice.
And then, at six, my taxi home; a cuddle
before I left you waving at the corner,
bound for my mother, our monthly weekend over.
And she would always seem a little warmer
Than when I’d left, and I’d be slightly colder.
How could I know what an alcoholic was?
The Wig & Mitre’s now Widow Cullen’s Well.
The snugs have been pulled out, the walls made bare;
but the place still has the same sweet, musty smell,
And I’m going in for a drink again because
I know I’ll find a part of us in there.
Growing up between “two countries, two cultures, two parents”, Rory Waterman deploys the grace and tact of the emotionally bilingual in his first collection Tonight the Summer’s Over. His speaker in this week’s poem, Access Visit, carries off various balancing acts. He’s initially an adult reliving a childhood experience in which the child behaves like a small grown-up; then he’s an adult helplessly gripped by a childlike need.
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