I take my daughter into Breakfast Club,
Tracksuit bottoms sparking as I force myself along,
And leg ends heavy with damp;
She skips beside me, taut with a promise of the new,
Her sentences long, long, her questions unanswerable,
Her laughter unanswerable.
In the busy, smelly, milk and plimsoll hall, she stands bemused –
Aware, perhaps, that something is changing,
Hearing across a span which I have lost
(Or, if not lost, forgotten),
The din of warring hopes.
Through the window I see her – a uniformed dot –
Move, unnoticed, to her place.
Jeffrey Joseph was born in London in 1952 and was educated at the University of York, University College Cardiff and at The Open University. He worked at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before spending many years as Performance Manager at Trinity Laban Conservatoire. He is a heavily published musical journalist and poet. His music has been performed on the South Bank, at St John’s Smith Square, in Westminster Abbey, in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, throughout Europe and in Africa and the USA. He is published by Warwick Music/Hal Leonard Music and is distributed on-line by lulu.com.
Foxglove Journal 