An Ode to My FAther's Birthday

An Ode to My Father’s Birthday

Others call it an awaited holiday,
Yet to me, there’s special worth
Far more than cheers and celebratory mirth –
August thirty-first commemorates your birth.

Why should we frown at dance?
Why scorn song and childlike prance?
Oh, revivalist of musical plays!
Of Pygmalion’s Victorian days –
It’s the humour in your song,
That on days when things go wrong –
And sulking, temper’d vile;
Yet helplessly, to my face there creeps a smile,
And when you tell of Spanish intrigues,
When young swains for ladies seek,
“Clutch a rose betwixt his teeth,” you suggest;
Out of barren nothings you make a jest.

When you speak of military warfare,
There’s reflection and certain flair –
In history and bygone politics,
You speak; others admire your semantics.

Oh, dear Daddy, why dost thou support a dish?
Resembling a porpentine cross’d with catfish,
Where shouts and punches erupt galore
Who is insensitive to the very core.

Yet, when you smile, it spreads like warmth,
Wide and friendly, joy springs forth,
Within, my ribcage rises, rumbles,
There’s and urge to burst out laughing
In your mischief-intention’d fumbles.

Oh, author of my spirit!
You dear old sensitive soul,
People laugh, but so may be it!
Yet having yet disclosed the whole,
Let me halt, let me say,
“Dear old parent, happy birthday!”



31st August 2007.