What Pop Caught

The average annual rainfall for the month of May

back home in Tourist Town

came down in twenty minutes

one afternoon at three

in a sub-tropical thunderstorm



from beneath the shelter of the tilt-a-door

me & Pop watched the deluge

deciding to conduct a science experiment



He reckoned that if you walked in the rain

you'd get less wet than if you ran like buggery

I thought he was full of it

so I bolted out to the letterbox

& came back soaked to the skin



Pop took his time

singing a tune & swinging his arms

but he hurried back inside

when Grandma busted us

howling out of the kitchen screaming



        "You'll catch your death!"



She attacked me with a rough towel

rubbing scalp & skin raw

as she vigorously dried from top to toe

Pop's language became very colourful

when she took the towel up to him



Pop caught his death sooner

than we could have imagined

crabs of cancer gutted him like a fish

the next time I saw him

tubes & stitches & bandages

were all that held him together

& a bleeping contraption

chimed the faltering rhythm of his heart

like a second-hand answering machine



It wasn't raining at all the day death caught Pop

my uncle, the doctor in the family

said that

        "When your oesophagus comes adrift

        of your windpipe & starts pouring acid

        all over your vital organs

        you're a dead duck."

My ten-year-old mind eased

for I knew that Grandma's doom-saying

couldn't possibly be the true diagnosis

because hardly any of those raindrops

ever got any where near my Pop