Three Poems by Graeme Richardson

from Pop Songs

Still

About the soothing,
hugging, rocking; the
night-waking, teething,
the cluster-feeding:
truthfully, sometimes,
your demands, your needs,
seem unreasonable.
So too my response —
I clamp and stifle,
sing and talk-over,
swing, pat and shuffle
round the blacked-out room.

Should I sit you down
in a high-backed chair,
and prompt, head inclined,
calmly listening?
And, to your radish-
faced howls and shrieking,
tactfully gesture
at the tissue-box;
after a pause, ask
how that made you feel;
nod as you convulse,
huff-snuffle in grief?

No, I shush – like rain
in a rainforest,
leaf-swish and branch-brush,
ape-balm, parrot-hush,
leopard-lullaby;
or push, through my teeth,
an ocean to shale
and pale midnight cliffs;
I put my old shell
to your shell-like, while
reason’s not enough:
that rising tide’s love.

Short Day

Small footprints in snow —
So perfect – soon
Will fade and go,
Like the dawn winter moon.

Like the smudge moon at dawn
In low bleach sun:
Only just born
But away you run.

You run far away
With the patter of thaw.
Your whole being play
And my heart sore.

Christmas Present

So I agreed to join in hide-and-seek,
Despite being sleepy and swamped with beer,
And at a disadvantage in physique,
But wanting to be present, to be here
And, you know, take away the mask, the screen,
And once again at Christmas be a kid.
The children counted backwards as I hid.
But then I saw, sat painfully between
Two beds, their blankets balanced on my head,
That this – sit still, endure, don’t speak a word –
Is my adulthood: alien, exiled,
And worse, among pre-schoolers, well, pre-dead.
Then on that sad and lowly plain I heard
Your laughter coming closer. Find me, child.

Graeme Richardson has published poems, essays and reviews in various outlets over the last twenty years, including the Guardian and the TLS. He is now the Poetry Critic of the Sunday Times.