Slad has beguiled generations
of men and women to fall on muddy knees
and play cider-games under broken hay carts.
The women wore their mothers’ lipstick.
Now, your vagabond father slumps,
swallowing a Bloody Mary beside the valley.
What rags he wears, what yellow teeth!
Cursing immigrants for their greed, red
running from his mouth. Little else has life
to surprise or disgust us – perhaps his feet,
already caked in dirt, only just removed
from seam-burst work boots. What grey
eyes, like rainwater pooled in an atrophied
oil drum – and I recall when we were young.
How dusk fell then, fatigued, like the turning
of prayer book pages in the village church.
The brambles with no berries left to pick,
how startlingly thin our fathers were.

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Ralf Webb is reviews and assistant poetry editor at Ambit Magazine. He was recently highly commended in the Faber New Poets scheme.