My Father's Eyes
Janet Kenny

So blue, my father’s eyes out of the river;

he swam too long, I held my frightened breath

sure that some weed or log had caused his death.

Then with a rush the water would deliver

his face, triumphant at my lack of faith.

Proud of his power to frighten me. I never

believed he would survive. He seemed forever

imprisoned in some crevice underneath.

To venture in that dark and rushing pool

was more than I could bear. I chose to swim

in sunlit shallows where cicadas’ prattle

and softly dipping willows made a cool,

consoling summer refuge. Nothing grim

could lurk, or rise intent to smirk and startle.

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Janet’s notes: “My New Zealand family used to picnic beside a river in a lovely valley enclosed by steep hills. Rapids rushed over sun-heated rocks and below the rapids was a wide pool of warm water. My father was an accomplished swimmer and he liked to dive from the river bank and hold his breath as long as possible. He would suddenly appear from an unsuspected location, like a cormorant. This used to terrify me.”

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Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993. Her poems have been published in many printed and online journals. She has published two collections of poems: This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press) and Whistling in the Dark (Kelsay Books). Her work is in several anthologies including Outer Space: 100 Poems, edited by Midge Goldberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This last particularly delights her because she is number 79 in the list of 100 poets who in recorded time have written in some way about space, including Homer, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Shelley, Pushkin, Housman, Yeats, Lorca, Wilbur, Stallings and Simic. She is very sorry she can’t tell her late husband. He would have laughed.

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My Father's Eyes Janet Kenny

My Father's Eyes
Janet Kenny