He ripped the thatched roof off a pub once…
I say it, not for the first time, to the question
“What’s your dad like?”
The gap before I add “…with his lorry”
gives the person I’m talking to the chance
to get a scale of the man’s hands. It sets up
an image of outrageous shoulders
that carried a family’s safety
through dark country lanes and long night shifts.
It presents a power to remove danger,
threaten anything that may hold us back.
The lorry delivers the clumsiness,
the clown make up on a circus lion
desperate to bite the head off anything that teases.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC.