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Sport 20: Autumn 1998
Summer Alarm
Summer Alarm
Palmerston North
is rabbits in a window,
a few flattish clouds
like crushed tin cans,
Ella Fitzgerald singing,
‘I've got you under my skin.’
Back at the hospital;
my father is conscious.
He doesn't look so very ill,
just tousled, in need of a haircut.
Fettered and laced
by coloured tubes and wires
(needled and taped; hooked up to jeopardy),
he says he thinks he's in
a James Bond movie.
Something is open
that should be closed.
Is closed, that should
be open.
Meanwhile he plays
the sharp young blade,
as suave and dark as in
his air force photograph.
And winks at my sister.