just below the handle’s curve
the open jaws of two carved dragons
reach for the celestial pearl
I was glad of the stick this afternoon
it gave confidence in crossing
four waterlogged fields
he was taller by six inches
but it fits me well enough
my father’s Chinese staff
I have been the keeper of this walking-stick for longer than my father was. He acquired it during his time as Director of Lands and Surveys in Sarawak, from 1967 to 1972. I visited my parents not long before they packed up to go home to Dorset for a few weeks before his next posting, even further away, in what was then the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, now Kiribati. Both posts were concerned with de-colonising in the best and most orderly way possible.
The stick, made from a pale tan close-grained wood, was probably a gift from one of his Chinese friends. He was an active man and never needed a walking-stick until he became ill at the end of his life. He used it during his last holiday with my mother, in Madeira, not long before he died a month before his 59th birthday. That was in 1980, the year I moved from Liverpool to Somerset.
This post first appeared on Barley Books