Resilient

A poem for my Dad

I have seen you there, in the very depths 

The murkiest waters 

The deepest well 

Casting off the chains from your struggling body 

Ripping away the weights that have held you 

Constricted you 

Coiled your limbs, rattled your bones 

Beaten your brow with the aches of adulthood 

Made you a child. 

Smaller than a child. 

Fear seeping from your eyes as you reach, 

Grasping with desperate hands at the evading light 

The fickle air 

Forever a fingertip away 

 

But now 

I see you rise 

I see your chains dissolve in the face of resolution 

Breaking the surface 

No longer a stranger 

No longer a child 

 

I see you in a burst of colour 

Shaking off the toxic waters of the past 

And leaving your message across the sky in a rainbow of fire and stars 

For those of us with our heads still underwater 

A banner of resilience  

A promise of hope