by Jo McInerney

My father changed little
through the last years,
his face round and bland,
his pale hair
fringing a bald scalp,
wisp tufted.

But slowly his mind slipped
away from the unfamiliar
and wandered
to where it had known
joy – a series of single-fronted
terrace houses, hunched
along narrow streets
backed by cobbled lanes.

There he and his swarm
of brothers had skived
and shouted,
fought and played till
called inside
by the tiny, soft-faced
woman who had borne
them all.

In his final days
he had looked at me
and seen her
and when he died, I knew
the one place
to which he would return.