Thank you.

For Graeme Giles.

Many things I feel I owe to you about the way I am and the life I have. It’s only fair I take the time to thank you.

Thank you for every year lived long, hard and passion-full.

Thank you for love without condition and homes built with strength and care.

Thank you for pride in work and love for all around.

For you Dad-joke humour, Globbo, thanks.

Thank you for music – from Looney Tunes to Pinafore.

Thank you for self-singing.

(Each of my long-suffering flatmates may not thank you, but I do.)

Thank you for word love, place love, thing love, people love.

Thank you for collections and tinker joys.

Thank you for showing a towering temper can be tempered.

Thank you for not being scared of celebrating oddity.

Thank you for manners and respect.

Thank you for growth: continual and unexpected.

Thank you for parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, and the rest of those songs.

Thank you for stories – tall and heart-felt.

Thank you for books books books.

Thank you for that Commodore 64. Jump-man, Archon, The Secret of Bastow Manor.

Thank you for a sense of mystery, of scepticism, of the underdog.

Thank you for wonder.

For belief, thank you.

Thank you for shouting at the TV. I really enjoy that. Bloody ref.

Thank you for drives along lonely Australian stretches, counting posts.

Thank you for itchy feet, for living in each place enthusiastically, unabashedly.

Thank you for coming through a hard life: things forgotten, not forgotten.

Thank you for teaching, for learning.

Thank you for childhood not restricted to only children.

For peeling oranges, thank you.

Thank you for trees, birds, kangaroosters.

Thank you for cups of tea, ginger nuts, lollies.

For being right, even if that ends up wrong, thanks.

Thank you for every performance of every nature.

Thank you for the love with Mum and our tribe of Gileses.

Thank you for a name you made yourself.

Thank you for this poem, and all poems.

Thank you for your being.