It began well. Loneliness took a back seat
In my new surrounds, my hastily appointed,
Pandemic-induced home-office where,
Bubbled away from the push and shove
Of city streets, the boredom of the boardroom,
My natural shyness ventured out, asserted itself;
Found solitude to its liking, demanded more.
In my new continuum, with the keyboard
My slim black portal to the outside world,
I cranked up the pace, accomplished what I had
To do in record time and, like a latent adolescent
Dizzied by the siren call of cyberspace, wallowed in
A myriad sites and groups, buffered by geography
And the knowledge I would likely never meet
The people behind the posts. There’s relief in that.

Most of the time, I hold my duplicity at bay,
Quell the flaring of frustration that there’s nothing
Between like and love, no way to say unsure,
Or give doubt due consideration. Yet in all this
I am complicit, and push away a foggy awareness
That a certain levelling out is taking place, that
I’m choking in the silken clutch of supposed
Communication. My coffee grows cold; so too
The irony that I’ve never had so many friends,
Yet have seen my neighbour only once.

‘No event can cease to be, or begin to be, itself, since it never ceases to have a place as itself… ‘
                                                                                      — JME McTaggart, British philosopher (1866–1925)

I see you look at the husk of me, and would have
Liked to let you know it’s not what it appears,
And I don’t want your pity. The weighing scales
Of body and soul are tipping now, working in
Inverse proportion. I gather up my days, feel the
Lip of time curl back on itself, washing away
My daily wearies, landing me on the shore of
Another place between a past that hasn’t happened
Yet, and a future I know already. It’s a coming home
Of sorts: every thought and feeling I’ve ever had, or
Might have had, or wished I hadn’t—a nether world
Of possibilities, and future memories held in storage.

I could have done it better, sure, but—see? I put
Regret where it belongs, along with blame and
Grief and shame. I daisy-chain my smiles and
Tears, note the particular quality of the sky
At dusk, and admit again my shadow selves
I buried long ago with those I loved. Enough
Of such talk; it would mean as much to you
As Morse code would to me. Yet I see you
Discussing me, for I’ve become less a person
Than a predicament. Your words snowflake
The air; I sense the drift of your intent, and
Feel the white spaces of your pauses. I know
You know my circle’s near-complete, but how
To intimate I’m far richer now than when
My soul was spread as thin as Marmite
In the heady rush of a full-blooded life?

i.m. Patrick

You’ve got his eyes, she said.
And his smile, he added. They turned
To look at each other, their expression
One and the same. Literal minded
As we are at four or five, for a while
I considered myself a composite being,
A patchwork of pre-existing features,
Not an original, certainly not unique.

I was careful, later, with my own sons
Not to bequeath them a cast of traits,
A sense their aptitudes and by extension
Their paths in life were preordained,
Determined by genetics.

And then one day, one cicada singing
Summer afternoon, reaching for distraction
In old photo album, we opened at my uncle
In shirt and crooked tie, his shy half-smile
Lighting up the page. My youngest stared,
Then looked up at me, and said, ‘Mum,
You’ve got his eyes.’ I nodded and thought
Of my mother, the echoes and reverberations
She’d pick up in things and people
That others didn’t see.

And my son, he had her mind.

since I last heard your voice, or saw you
step off the plane at 76, quite an age to emigrate,
newspaper in hand as my mother pushed the trolley,
aware you weren’t quite the man you used to be
unaware of what you brought by merely being there
grasping your trusty cherry wood walking stick
shiny handled from all the years of grasping,
time enough to scrape a meeting with my son
who grew up not knowing what he missed,
yet still that great grey slab of time keeps stretching
getting no more distant for being more thinly stretched
week by year by decade, and now you’re doubling back
two countries ago, tea-towel slung over your shoulder,
pouring a glass of red and flipping potatoes in olive oil,
steadying the fry-pan with the wobbly black handle
as I slice garlic and onion, and tear off a chunk of bread,
jamming it between my lips as my mother taught me
to shore up the watering in my eyes.

I’d catch the sharp smell of solvent
As I rounded the corner down from our apartment
Hurrying each morning to the station at the Cross
Under the glorious jade and scarlet cascade
Of dozens of swaying bougainvillea
Where, with practised bendings and twistings,
She’d be folding and smoothing and hanging
And sheathing in plastic the incessant array
Of shirts and trousers and jackets and suits
That hug so many of the city’s nine-to-fivers,
Until finally one day I stopped and entered,
And handing over a neighbour’s creased receipt
A child in the backroom stared back at me
Her almond eyes unblinking in the gloom
And I wondered why she wasn’t at school,
As the manager, with my change, explained:
‘I keep her with me, since a week ago,
A man, he try to buy my daughter.’