Shave
These stubbled slopes and hollows graze
my fingertips as I trace his cheek,
his jowl, stroke the sandstone
of his skin. First time in so many
decades I’ve held my father’s chin.
As an infant in my mother’s arms,
my podgy hands – post-amniotic,
tentacled probes – would quest the air
for touch-down until his face
loomed: lathered, razored, lotioned
to velour – a burnished moon.
I’m more familiar with him now than ever
before. The cannula loops its suspension
bridge across the chasm between us.
Silent in his white cape, he holds
his head in aristocratic pose. The shaver
skirrs across the bonescape of the skull,
cutting the bristles so close that even
with a complexion belying his years, wrinkles
flatten and the slack fat folds
beneath my fingers as I stretch the skin.
At bedtime, when I was a child, he’d jut
his jaw and let me massage his five o’clock
shadow. With his goodnight kiss, he’d scour
his chin across my cheeks and scrub them
to a flush until I screeched at the smart
of paternal abrasion, its tenderness and play.
Cupping his chin in this purlicue arc –
thumb on one cheek, index on the other –
I gauge the new growth the blades
will pare away, erasing the years
as I shave his skin waxen, exposed.
Cardiff-born and bred, Robert Walton recently won the North American Festival of Wales English-language Poetry Award for the second consecutive year. His collection, Sax Burglar Blues, was published by Seren (2017). He lives in Bristol and is a member of The Spoke poetry collective.