Prayer for My Father as a Child
In the house where he sleeps
let my ears
be the leaves at the window.
Let the bulbs of the lamps
be my eyes
on the animal street.
Let the shadows that harbour
my unborn body
stir when harm is stirring.
I’ll sleep in the drawer
with the knives.
I’ll turn in the locks.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2017. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2017 was Roddy Woomble.
Author’s note:
I started writing this poem in Yonkers, New York, after the flat I was living in got broken into. In the nights afterwards, I was hyper-aware of sounds, lights and shadows. That’s where the images in the poem came from, along with the form of the prayer with its repetitions and appeal for protection. Much later, when I was assembling my collection, All the Prayers in the House, the poem became a prayer for someone else’s safety – my father’s before I was born. The feeling of danger and alertness I had experienced after the break-in became a vessel for exploring the wish to protect those we love in impossible ways.
