Turn off the radio, please – I can’t take
one more story of a parent and kids
ripped from a shore or upturned in a loch,
of how not all, or none, came swimming back –
not now I’ve put our boy once in the sea
balanced on my forearm to kick kick kick
and watched him grow accustomed to the shocks
of buoyancy in waves hard at his back.
Please – my head is full of helicopters.
I know, I know. He will let go of me.
from Take This One to Bed
(Valley Press, October 2016)