My Father

If succour I would offer some old man
Who occupies a doorway, slumped, as though
It caught him in freefall and made life slow
I'd comfort more my father, understand
He dreamed of instruments with strings and sounds
That catapaulted Mozart up to God
But found himself with bombsights. Surely odd
They aimed themselves at music's holy ground?
He spent a quarter century of love
With guidance systems but he's now adrift
And often drunk or violent. Does truth lift
The veil of black we share and know not of?
I love you, father, far away. We fall
Through nights of faults, just mortal after all.

Nik Habermel, September 1998