A lamp on your bedside table,
and a small bottle of olive oil.
A magic potion, holding
the key to your life’s mystery.
The label, grease spotted,
from the chemist in those days,
when the Coop sold flour from bins
and a man brought milk in a cart.
You were an enigma to me,
though I could sit on your lap
on the striped deckchair and
hold onto your ear and suck my thumb.
A table spoon of olive oil when you woke,
your panacea. Once you let me taste it.
Poured it out like medicine, bitter
on my tongue and in my head,
your memories of that long battle
in Italy, returning to a daughter
who didn’t know you, to make
a flawed but happy son who
would be a child forever.
In the end you were not immortal,
not the omnipotent patriarch we all
respected and obeyed. There was a day
when I turned from my son’s pram
to push your wheelchair with such
a practised ease and knew
your olive oil had not protected you,
that I must be my own lucky charm.