Filling the Void.

Note: When my father and I met he was 65 and I, 38 years old. I had been looking for him since I was 16.

PART I.
I stumbled through a childhood drunk on woe.
Like a bagatelle ball flipped there and here.
And into a void of thirty years or so
I’d poured gravel, sand, garbage and tears.

­The emptiness stayed hollow,
though it resounded just enough
to convince those who would follow
inside was interesting stuff.

Nothing that entered that space of space
ever stayed and never filled it.
As if my inside was especially made;
only a particular shape would fit it.

PART II
When I met my father, life was fast and replete
a career, a lover, mortgage arrears
kids moithering under my feet –
and that void, mostly ignored, and feared.

Son with dad for the very first time,
that night I had cause to reflect
on the meeting of a dream with elation and rhyme
and the magic I could expect.

Africa, siblings, the hope of real joy!
Welcome imaginings that night
but none meant as much to this big, little boy
as Dad’s form which clicked in just right.

PART III
Years later it was that he showed me,
a large tupperware box;
into which he placed golf balls, repeatedly
until they’d reached the top.

“Is the box now empty Peter?” he asked.
“Of course not,” said I, “It’s full.”
I was ever so slightly taken aback
when he poured in a handful of gravel.

“So it’s full now, is it?” said he;
“Ha!” I laughed and held up my hand.
“Just a moment,” he added and stopped me
to fill the box further with sand.

“Dad,” I said, “You’re a genius”
“Now it is filled to the brim”
He smiled, “Son you’re getting too previous,”
then poured a glass of water in!

He went to the fridge while I sat to think,
why the box of my life had felt cursed.
If golf balls represent important things
I should have made sure they were all in there first.

Instead I’d filled my box with gravel and sand
and the golf balls just wouldn’t fit.
Dad emptied the box, but filled me, understand
with the exact right shape of his spirit.

I called to the kitchen, “That’s a lesson learned, Pops”
he returned with a four-pack, “That depends.”
Then he opened three bottles poured one in the box
saying, “Always room for a beer with friends!”