Celebrating... My Dad...

Today is the anniversary of my father’s death, and just like that day three years ago it was a glorious sunny autumnal day, something like this morning. Time has passed and I thought I would celebrate my Dad’s life with one of his poems. This is the first time it has been published anywhere.


Sunrise


Pastel green, the valley’s shade – naïve
As virgin-grass shooting from the spring-sown-seed,
Misting in the distance with the purple haze
Of sombre broken mountains, almost varicose, foreboding.
Frail, reluctant clouds nestle on those barren peaks
Like unfurled haloes crowning some unsaintly god.
Yet from the heart of that hideous range
Rise innocent fountainlets, embryonic streams
Which prance alone, then, hand in hand
Dance down craggy slopes to the pastel valley;
And on, through tributary adolescence
To cascade, at my feet there to mature
In the swirling intensity of the rivers flow.

The half light searching for receptive minds
In which to implant impressions of the glistening morn,
Sweeps through those haloes and dominates in turn
Those granite monsters, which cringe and shrink
From the imminent spectral fury we call dawn.
Gradually the brightness sears the eyes, challenging
Those mortals who dare defy the dominant star
To a duel that they cannot win. I bow, as tears of pain
Fall silent on my cheek, seeking solace in the pastel valley
Radiant with glittering reflections in her myriad streams.
Yet my patient friend, caninely immune to this silent symphony,
Senses my mood and obediently follows, as sobered I turn
From the turbulent river, toward the beginning of my day.

By G. E. Phelps

Midsummer 1973