Rescuer

He is always there – quick to come – at the end of the ‘phone.
As when, after the operation, he was first to answer 
dropping all when my explanations gave way to long-held-back tears.

And before that, daily at my bedside with the kids, bringing 
Mince and tatties I couldn’t quite stomach, punctuating the 
Monotony of the sickly pale blue-green of the walls.

Level-headed, cheering, re-assuring; the kind of guy who’s
Good-in-a-Crisis. Unlike father who doesn’t deal with pain –
Whom I’ve sent  away, now again falling on my brother.

This time it’s in a storm with a big white van and we wrestle
With burst pipes mending them too – cutting, figuring, by-passing.
‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ he says…
Solutions present themselves but his win over, more elegant, 
less involved, somehow cleverer. Happily I abdicate these
choices. Freed from decisions, I’m the mate who fetches tools.

These roles are played out endlessly. They may be assertions,
Or reversals, of appropriate capabilities. Demonstrating loyalty,
The idea of needing and being needed, defining love.

Giles H. Sutherland
March 2009