'DIDN'T THEY WANT ME?': POEM ABOUT MY PARENTS...

Didn’t They Want Me?

Was it simply that my mum couldn’t give a damn?

Leaving me in the front garden alone in my pram?

Passers-by would see me but ignored me there

And perhaps like my mother they really didn’t care…

She was stuck with me, a left-hander who readily smiled,

Countenance accepting, mannered so mild;

Never received hugs though, despite my grin,

Typical of the times that I grew up in…

My father once walked me in Ward End Park,

I was bobbing up and down in my pram;

He headed down a slope towards the boating pool,

So I actually wonder, if HE too gave a damn?

A damaged footballer’s knee then suddenly locked,

The pain caused him to grab at the joint

But my pram rolled forth with no brake applied:

Today Health and Safety would labour the point…

The perambulator free-wheeled towards the pond,

My dad, in panic somehow freed his jammed knee;

He managed to scramble and grab the runaway pram,

Preventing a drowning and an early death for me…

So mum attempted to have me abducted,

Dad tried to set me adrift on a pool…

Why didn’t they simply send me away for adoption,

To avoid being the parents of a fool? 

Pete Ray

December 2016

These two incidents really did happen…

I have tried to make light of dad’s plight in the park but it was customary in the 1950s I believe, to leave a child in the front garden in its pram (to benefit from the ‘fresh’ air?)

I lived to tell both tales but obviously the poem is light-hearted…

Maybe…