My Dad Hikes

by Michael Penny

He’s over ninety now,
and his walk is limited,

every second day, half a kilometer,
guided and safe with the staff

from the aged care home.
Along a river where the parrots complain

and once they encountered a snake, avoided
and an eastern water dragon, admired.

But Dad says he repeats the walk
he did when he was twenty

from Rawson’s Station to Arkaroola,
through Wilpena Pound and Edeowi Gorge.

I checked the internet’s map
and see he’s conflated two hikes,

but geography does not matter
when memory makes its own history.

He re-lives every step
and the hike still ends

in an opening up to a vast desert,
empty of all but his future.

A Night Sleep Sequence

None, too much, poorly, poorly,
as body and clock disagree

when the planet assigns its hours
to day and sleepless night.

The astronomical doesn’t acknowledge
my need for sleep

The stars are always awake
or merely dreaming;

we’ll never know.

Disputing a Charge

The credit card statement said
$27.71, converted currency
but we didn’t buy from that stranger.

I press numbers through the menu
of inedible options, until
a bank person a continent away

checked who I was until
“OK, I’ll look into it.”
Several transfers of my patience

and I get to tell my story
to a critic who questions plot
and character development

until suspended belief finally lands,
and truth makes a note that
some thing recorded was not.

BIO

Michael Penny was born in Australia, but his family moved to Canada when he was young. He now lives and writes on an island near Vancouver, BC, and has published five books and previously appeared in The Writing Disorder.