Yesterday's World

I am a child of yesterday's world, and all its tomorrows are my children

My mother and father loved me, life, and the world around in equal measure

Their hand at my side taught me to do the same

I was only eight - the same age as my little Miranda -

when my father left me, life, and the world around us with no fanfare

He was not a man for fanfare, I suppose

It was 10 years later that I stood, drenched with sweat and triumph

at the summit of Mt Quandary (no joke!)

and shouted my father's name in anger

In anger?

Yes. Not that he had left me to grow unguided

But that now, driven by the lessons he had woven into my being

I had grown, and could not show him what I had become.

(2005)