Day 104

Today's words:

Pocket

Inn

Father

Scaffold

Bird

Tonic

Jason took the card from his pocket

And walked into the inn.

He was going to meet his father

But he felt more like walking to the scaffold.

He felt fragile as a baby bird.

He wished he'd taken sone of that tonic

His mother had offered. And there drinking a gin and tonic,

One hand in his pocket. 

With eyes like a bird,

Sitting at the bar in the inn,

Underneath a scaffold,

Was the man he supposed was his father.

He'd never met his father,

But he knew he drank gin and tonic.

That's what they'd been drinking that night on the scaffold.

He'd taken some money from his pocket

And taken the girl to an inn.

The next morning the song of a bird awakened her,

But she was alone, apart from that bird.
The man, now his father,
Was gone, and no-one at the inn
Knew where he'd gone. Head pounding from gin and tonic,
She put his handkerchief in her pocket
And walked out under the scaffold.

That's where it had started - they'd climbed on the scaffold,
From which a bird
Now watched her leave, one hand in her pocket.
He hadn't known he was the boy's father
Until much later. Now there he was, drinking a gin and tonic
At the same inn.

Twenty years later, the inn
Was again surrounded by a scaffold.
But the effect would be tonic;
He wasn't a bird,
He was a man, and he was going to confront his father,
Pulling that old handkerchief out of his pocket.

From the roof of the inn, a bird
Watched as Jason passed under the scaffold to meet his father,
Ordering a gin and tonic and pulling something from his pocket.