by Peter Davis
the hypotenuse of my father thinking with a pigeon perched upon his head the angled neck of a humble smiling man I love him and I’m still young enough to tell him so often we are a family in this Migrant Hostel the pigeon and its grassy songs of innocence dad so old he knows to allow himself to become a perch for a pigeon so humble the way he bends his head to be a perfect perch he is the angle of the sky falling with a sigh and an ancient truth that we must all sit still in our waiting and allow a bird’s soul to land upon our nit-shaven heads Dad says the holy spirit is a scruffy pigeon today and that I‘m a single breath my dad once took when he and mum created me on the other side of the world it was a collective breath of one thousand Vietnamese souls who are now all contained within my gold-flecked fingers and my swimming-pool eyes that you say are pure-cool dreams hey dad you make me laugh and you make the bird sleepy sitting on this splintery porch under a floodlight in the green air a dim electricity and dampness hey dad let me sketch your thirty years of swaying faces your so old dad that you even survived a whole war you say that I can touch the pigeon’s tail while it sleeps and your old neck knows discomfort is a small illusion compared to honour of being a perch for heavenly wings at rest Dad tell me again about the pigeons you kept in Vietnam how you hid with them safely under the willow trees by the Dong Nai River as the sky filled with blood again and the sound of bombs was like furniture breaking inside your head and then you kissed mum 100 times in a row to make her smile swell-up like a delta raincloud
Old Water Rat Publishing 