That Ochre Landscape
When I think of my late father there is one memory that inevitably comes to mind, first and faster than any other; one scene that, for me, is my father, inescapably. I cannot help but see him that way.
It is not the moments he bounced me on his knee, though with a surety I can say that he did, I can remember that far back, if I try. It is not his face hoving in and out of view when he stayed by my bedside for days, nursing me back to health from the wasting fevers that took me. It is not the time he held me and sobbed into my hair when my mother had been lost to consumption, nor even her weak choking that very moment she died in his arms, though I was there to witness that terrible thing too.
No. Those memories are there, certainly, but when I think of my father what comes immediately to mind is that ochre landscape, where all the colour seems frozen in oranges and yellow-browns; all except the wet red splattered up his saber and across his stern face as he stands there in the sand and bright sun, with the man who would have saved me, my love, lying dead at his feet.
It is not the moments he bounced me on his knee, though with a surety I can say that he did, I can remember that far back, if I try. It is not his face hoving in and out of view when he stayed by my bedside for days, nursing me back to health from the wasting fevers that took me. It is not the time he held me and sobbed into my hair when my mother had been lost to consumption, nor even her weak choking that very moment she died in his arms, though I was there to witness that terrible thing too.
No. Those memories are there, certainly, but when I think of my father what comes immediately to mind is that ochre landscape, where all the colour seems frozen in oranges and yellow-browns; all except the wet red splattered up his saber and across his stern face as he stands there in the sand and bright sun, with the man who would have saved me, my love, lying dead at his feet.