Mark Murphy
THE SLEEPING FATHER
My father is asleep with a book over his face.
His brow is all perspiration. Beads of sweat
roll down his chest.
His breathing
is heavy and staggered in the dusty August heat.
I think it must be the warmest day of the summer
so far. I watch him closely,
taking great care
not to wake him. The gramophone spindle is loaded
with 78's performing a hushed balancing act, poised
on the brink of something
momentous.
A daddy-long-legs whirrs at the ceiling by the paper
lampshade. Today is a good day to be alive.
It is a good day to be
seven years old.
A sudden light penetrates the curtains, catching
the buckle of his wrist watch. His arms are brown
and thick from working
in the sun.
His shoulders are red and peeling like pomegranate.
It is an easy picture to summon. The memory
of it is larger
than life.
My attention wanders to some mad scheme or daydream.
I chase down the hallway in search of tin soldiers.
I fight the battle to end
all battles.
The house is quiet. No voices. No traffic on the road.
Just soundless heat. And my father fast asleep
in his favourite chair,
out like a light.
* * *
MANAGEABLE SPACE*
Anyone acquainted with
the ideas of Herr Freud
will be glad to learn
as I did,
that we are not alone
in our anxieties;
even the good
professor suffered
bouts of agoraphobia,
which is no laughing matter,
since the response
is one of terror.
Asked what it was
that caused the fear,
he might have said
it was his childhood,
an early memory of steam
trains, the action
of the pistons, or
that the rattling
of the carriage mimicked
death. Imagine then,
a lake or reservoir -
nothing too disturbing.
You are standing
at the water's edge,
you see yourself
from a great distance.
What do you see
but a human dot?
You need to get away
from the water, the expanse
is too much, too blue.
You need to get back
to the world
of enclosure, the world
of manageable space.
Now imagine Sigmund's train.
On such journeys
the mind is lost.
The reasonable world is lost
to the opening out
of an unfamiliar landscape,
hills and mountains,
estuaries and flood plains,
where the desire to get free
is contradicted
by the desire to hide.
At last, you can put
yourself in the shoes
of the good professor.
Mark Murphy was born in the UK in 1969. He studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry
at Masters level. He has had two chapbooks published, Tin Cat Alley (Spout Publications) and
Our Little Bit Of Immortality (Erbacce Press). His first full length collection,
Night-watch Man and Muse is due out in 2013 from Salmon Poetry (Eire).
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