Three decades Dad’s volunteered at Oxfam,
sorting the books, pricing them, putting them out,
taking longer each year to walk the quarter mile,
summer and winter, tapping his stick along streets
shifting like oceans under his feet.
Knocked over once by a gust of wind, picked up
by passersby, making poor progress through snow, rain, sleet.
He went deaf in that shop, grew cancerous,
became a great grandfather five times over,
reached the unlooked-for age of 95,
finally acquired his own chair – till other helpers stole it
to ease their aching knees; he never said a word.
I think I’ll die if I stop, he’s often said.
Once he was four days in hospital, being inconveniently sick.
Went straight back to his books the following week.
Liz McPherson
From the National Poetry Day 2024 collection
This poem and others also appear in Shivering in the Wind published by Yaffle Press.