Tuesday’s Poem - My Zen Father

The only books you ever read

were car manuals; how things worked, the mechanics of it.

You knew what to do to make the engine hum.

Cylinder, sump and shock were words that ran off your lips like oil dripping on my front driveway.

Then years later well into your seventies, you spoke of the energy around your own body;

how it flowed in and around us like oil through an engine in invisible lines that were called meridians.

You said that when you lay in bed at night and almost joined your hands across your chest,

you could experience the energy jumping from the tips of the fingers on one hand,

over to the tips of the fingers on the other.

Just like jump-leads you smiled and I think that confirmed what I always thought.

That contented aura about you.

The way you prayed but really enjoyed life.

As though you always knew just where the music comes from.

Pat Galvin lives in Stradbally, Co Waterford. He has won the Cecil Day Lewis Award and has been twice shortlisted for the Hennessy Award. A collection ‘Where the Music Comes From’ appeared in 2010 from Doghouse.