Father's Day

My father died many years ago but you never forget

Fathers Day

They came in the grey
of that fractured dawn.
Those sombre men
in mourning suits.

Platitudinous and
ruthlessly efficient
they took him away
in an anonymous bag

Our childhood Everest,
Methuselah,
shrunken now
to common size.

Incomprehension muttered
behind our eyes,
minds locked, quarantined
from the mundane.

A lesser day dawned
empty and reduced
haunted by sullen night,
gravid with realisation.

Birds sang, milk rattled
children played.
Fatherless, we watched
him leave us.