My Father is not superman (simple words of Love)

I’m hoping you can help dad
I rely upon you
Always have.
I recall moments in my youthful recruitment
When you taught me the wicked ways of the world
How a spider injects a fly
The hapless struggle of its paper wings
Its every decreasing bursts
As it zips entangled the web
Dead, we watched that together
In the dim lit garden shed, our classroom
One lesson of many.
a squatted wasp you squished
for it stung my ear
I cried a torrent, wished it to live
a callous heart seemed so practical
an ingredient to survive.
Wonder why I attached emotion
To insects?
no idea to this day.

I watched you rotovate the fields
of our family farm
with your clever machines
Buried bricks would strike your shins
You’d stop, roll up your trouser,
look at the cutting blue bruise produced
then continue with gritted teeth.
You were like one of the animals
All seems such harsh lessons of survival.
You taught me about centrifugal force
More practical lessons
As I stirred the sugar in tea
leafs forced to chipped china outer rim
a brew in our garden shed café
spinning threads to survive.

Taught of the metallic spoon, how it conducts
and how many things the magnifying glass sees
All these lessons, from the man who knew the world.
Drawing fire through that curious clay pipe
30 years on
Rocking with semi contentment
you look at me with proud eyes.
Here comes a hint of emotion, shy
and I offer my harvest to your hands
these days you die
retreated to a warren
but
look what I went out and did dad!
I built the world for you.
I emptied the sea for you.
Killed for you, killed myself in doing so.
the child is finally dead

Let me present a row of sports cars
Or materiel things like that.
A massive career perhaps.
an empire of steel
or An army of labour, I built it all for you.
so how many tokens must I drag back home to prove
the man.

The shed has fallen down
Its match boards all rotted, I think you felled it
lopped the memory like it was never there.
I sometimes go and stand in its footprint
And lay my feeling threadbare
Oblivious of this the bliss and the unaware
Neither mind, nor care for such impractical thoughts
like the boy son magic was dead
So content
I just about hold your hand
Its taken years
For whilst all living things
I now understand
The bond
always seemed elusive
do I take it for granted,
the things unsaid were loving words?
ones so practical often uttered
Useful but missing something.
I realise you are not superman
But even he cried
And if penultimate days together arrive
I hope we finally say it
and not attribute science to simple words of love.