In an ecstasy of expectancy
one cigarette chasing another,
pacing from here to Maternity
with a fellow debutant father.
A moonlit camaraderie
until the breaking of morning and water
and the end of our social lives.
It was time. Time for support
and I sought something solid to cling to:
your mother gave me her hand.
She was ever resourceful and thoughtful
and didn’t swear quite so much back then.
Bastard! she hurled. Not in your direction;
at me, at God, at the female condition.
It’s a boy! The midwife spoke with decision:
crimson-faced from the struggle you’d risen
with a head slightly misshapen.
I quickly made a sign of the cross
and expressed my consternation.
She shrugged, that’s not so unusual
and he’ll soon conform to type.
Still, I thought we might ask an aunt to knit
balaclavas in claret and blue.
The placenta, however, was pleasingly striped
in maroon and white like the poles
displayed outside barbers’ shops.
I thought of something for the weekend,
but it was Wednesday: too early or too late.
You were wrapped in a towel and handed
to me while your mother was being attended to.
We called you Jack, had your name on a tag
and I wondered what position you’d have –
up front, midfield or at the back.
So long as you weren’t a Birmingham fan –
I could cope with anything but that.
Then she wanted you weighed, I pulled back the towel
and the scales fell as my eyes lit
upon feminine bits. Not a boy at all, not a sign of it.
I wondered if to play dumb or snitch,
but nothing had happened on my watch,
I hadn’t moved from off this spot
and couldn’t have got you lost or swapped.
So I spoke and showed and the midwife froze,
there was a pregnant pause…and we roared
as she humbled an apology. We laughed
like it could happen to anybody;
and you were gone, gone without a cheerio,
you had your twenty minute cameo
then back to the substitutes bench.
I don’t think about you all that often,
just wheel out the tale on the odd occasion.
Cheap laughter – at your expense, at mine, at hers;
it doesn’t really matter, I’m that kind of father:
wholly superficial and insensitive,
mocking everyone for nobody’s benefit.
Be grateful you didn’t inherit it.
Raymond Miller
If you have any thoughts about this poem, Raymond Miller would like to hear them.
