Gratitude

Dear Mum and Dad
I carry you in my heart and head
for I neither believe
and most certainly hope
that you not looking down
from some heavenly crows-nest

for most of your lives
you did not believe either
and your latter-day church going
was, I think, more social
– a way to integrate in
the many places you moved to

but your taking us to church
not only gave us the choice
but sharpened my scepticism
into a personal humanist credo
according to which
I carry you in my heart and head

I thank you, Mum
for refusing to teach me to cook
reserving that for my sisters
and for launching my student cuisine
with the gift of a Sabbatier knife
and the condescending choice

of “Cooking in a Bedsit”
which made me seek out
the racier author Elizabeth David
sailing round the Med with her married man
garnering recipes to change
the cooking of a nation

and Dad, though you never
took me sailing, you taught me
to whip finish a rope and splice an eye
to coil a cable neatly and I took
pride in your designing a dinghy
and slipped into design too

I carry you in my heart and head
but I wanted to make concrete
these, amongst many things
I am grateful you gave me
– to put them out into the world
just as you birthed and shaped me…

© Andrew Wilson, 2026

You can read more about my parents in my last year’s A to Z
https://how-would-you-know.com/a-to-z-2025-challenge-dad-draughtsman-designer/
https://how-would-you-know.com/a-to-z-2025-challenge-elsie-jill-mum/

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write an Epistolary Poem, either as a Verse Epistle, or, as I have chosen to do, a Prose Poetry Epistle. I will also share this with my Ten Things of Thankful group…