Never knew my father was a poet, until 3 years after he died.

My father died when I was 14. A slightly distant man, he divorced from my mother when I was 10, and spent his remaining years in regular but awkward contact, trying to develop a relationship with his teenage son, but it was sadly a little too late.

When I was 17 an old friend of his called to say he had some things of my dad's he wanted to give me. They were an old guitar (I never knew he played) and a fully realized collection of poetry (I had no idea he wrote), typed on an old type writer and stapled together. The poems mostly reflected on his own life experiences. The collection was titled Mentioned in Dispatches

For those of you not familiar with this British military term, being MID refers to an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which is described his or her gallant or meritorious action in the face of the enemy. At the end I believe my father viewed his own life through this lens. The trenches of his life were not the battlefields of France, but living the day to day drudgery of a job he never wanted, and the slow disintegration of a young man's dreams.

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon

So I wanted to send a couple of his poems out into the world.
Thanks Trevor Coleby, you kept writing till the end.

A SONG TO YOU
Lay your head upon me, and rest a while with me,
Close your eyes in slumber, and let your mind drift free,
And I will watch your sleeping until it's time to leave,
Lay back here in softness in the web of love we weave.

The sunlight plays upon you, touches you with gold,
The full tale of your beauty can truly not be told,
Proud am I but humble, and my mind is full of peace,
I thank God for your loving, oh, may it never cease.

Gently now I touch you, fingers on your face,
How I long to keep you forever in this place,
Build the walls around us, let day pass into night,
And I would closely hold you until the morning light.

But we must leave our heaven whilst the sun's still in the sky,
And when I watch you ride away, a part of me will die,
Until you're here with me again, my heart to you will call,
Until I have you in my arms, my love, my life, my all.

So lay your head upon me, and rest a while with me,
Close your eyes in slumber, and let your mind drift free,
And I will watch you sleeping until it's time to leave,
Lay back here in softness in the web of love we leave.

PER ARDUA AD ASTRA
The questions have all been answered,
All doubts resolved.
The half-remembered fears pushed aside
In the face of love's power.
No momentary hunger to be satisfied,
Rather a deep and urgent need.
Outward expression of inner joys.

Wherever you may be no longer matters,
No halls or tapestries could compare
With the beauty of where you are.
Shaking, trembling, as in an earthquake,
Fireworks bursting in your brain,
The longed for, the dreamed for.
But dreams are pale cold shadows
Beside realities warmth.

Away, you are gone, lost for a while
From mortal knowledge, from common time.
Clean and sharp as an ice sword
In the ecstasy in your soul.
And you are falling, falling, falling,
Into an abyss in time and space.
Into the heart of a sun
That will burn you, destroy and cleanse,
Then give you life.