Exactly a year ago today at 3.15pm, I was on the Ferry to Larne, going home to visit my sick mother, when I received a call to say that she had passed away.

How to tell the children, who looked at me knowing the news was not good?

Sometimes I unexpectedly see

My long-dead Father

When I am fiddling.

Each time I close,

Each time I open

The curtains,

I see your picture

On top of the piano.

Bright sun dances off

The Black marble

And the shallow valleys

Of the gold engraving.

He looks

With round face and clear

Dark eyes,

Smiling with a gummy grin.

My Grandfather is listed in the 1911 census of Northern Ireland as a Cabinet Maker. James Black. A Catholic. From Ballycastle. When the R. M. S. Titanic was being built he, like thousands of others went and found work at Harland and Wolff.

Against the back fence

In the pouring rain

My Father’s bike.

The ‘Raleigh All-Steel’

Two flat tyres.

Raymond Carver – the American short story writer and poet published a book in 1985 called “Fires”. It is a great collection of essays and poems. Included in the book is a wonderful and moving essay called, “My Father’s Life” and a poem entitled, “Photograph Of My Father In His Twenty Second Year.” He says, “The poem was a way of trying to connect with him” long after he had died.