The Friday Poem: ‘My Late Father’ by Kay McKenzie Cooke
A new poem by Kay McKenzie Cooke.
my late father
After running for the bus
and the waiting driver telling me
I was cutting it a bit fine
time-wise, I sit down
thanking my lucky stars
and sense a momentary, sympathetic hand
on my shoulder. Country-reared,
my late father was terrified of city buses.
How do you work out where to stop
and pull the cord? While he’s here
on the bus with me, figuratively speaking,
I ask him
what eternity is like.
It is largesse, he says, it’s forever
never running out. It’s having more
than enough time.
And then some.
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The Friday Poem is edited by Hera Lindsay Bird. Submissions are currently closed.
Kay McKenzie Cooke
Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) lives and writes in Ōtepoti Dunedin. In 2003 her first collection Feeding The Dogs was awarded the Jessie McKay prize. Her fourth poetry collection, Upturned, was published by The Cuba Press in 2020. At present she's making like a wheke working on her fifth poetry collection, concocting her fourth self-published novel and putting together a memoir for whānau; all at the same time.
