Today I have porridge with real milk, full fat
Not soya or oat milk or goat’s milk, but that
Tastes just like the porridge I ate as a kid
Porridge that’s just like my dad used to make
Using the mug that he gave me, I thought of him
As I was mixing the oats and the water in
Using a good wooden spoon like he did
Adding salt for our old Scottish ancestors’ sake
And I made up a pot of loose tea like he would
On those wintry mornings, in his dressing gown
As I lay warm in bed till the 8 o’clock pips
The pipe smoke and steam rising as I came down
I sprinkle on sugar, let the honey drip
Then pour on a white lake, fridge-cold, to the tip
Of the bowl, till small islands of oats can be seen
Like Atlantis, half-glimpsed, just beneath the sweet sea
I don’t stir it up, but make channels and hollows
For the milk to run into, then scoop it and swallow
Milk warm from the porridge, and sweet from the stream
Of sugar and honey that swirls through it darkly
And I watch as the ocean recedes, falls away
And the land cools and hardens, and rises above
Just like in the days when the world was beginning
Through the steam and the smoke and the unspoken love
After, I shave with my dad’s shaving brush
And look in the mirror at the face that fell
From my father and mother to me, long ago
And I think of that story that they used to tell
Of a house in the woods that was found standing empty
With three bowls of porridge stood ready to eat
But nobody home. They’d all gone away
But the porridge was something, at least
Tags: aging, childhood, family, memory, time passing
