The autumn afternoon feels borrowed
as if you were living on someone else’s time
even though you sit on your own couch
and tilt the phone away from the light
for a closer look at a smile that looks like yours.

He sits like a soft goose under flax
blows you a featherlight future
hands cupped with the promise of flowers
as his eyes hold you to account.

Tell him again how you spent his life.

Even late school nights, Epona would call
from the last box in town to still take coins
to ask me to meet her at the old greyhound track
by the abandoned chicken cart.
A filament of green light from god knows what
hung in the sky beside dull oxen clouds
and pale moths made an orrery around
the solitary yellow globe above the street crossing.

I’d cross the empty streets to sit beside her on the wall
by the side entrance car park. As she told me
of adventures with her posse in the forest,
or of her long run to the outer hills, or how she lost
her turquoise ring braiding the river of Pele’s hair,
I’d remember the unopened worksheet on tangential velocity
waiting for me in my backpack.

Last night I opened my arms to the rays
of our shared red star and unfastened the suitcase
at the back of my trailer to read for the first time
in decades my enthusiastic predictions for these future years
scribbled in biro at the back of a B5 notebook
with the charm and accuracy of an astrological chart
drawn at a market fair stall. I would be the successor
to the wealth and fame of my father’s vacuum appliance
emporium and Epona would lead her wagon train troupe
of performers and musicians across distant plains and plateaux
each stop an embroidered, embellished story to be danced and told.

The station circles above the sky
way up high past the blue ozone fizz
at night the station crosses half-remembered constellations
the curled warrior by the chest of mahogany drawers
with the giant’s hair in her mouth
the one-eared dog asleep by the shepherd’s sword.
In the galley they’ll be singing the names of capitals
Accra, Addis Ababa, Amsterdam, Apia.
Loose spoons turn cartwheels above my head.
To sleep they harness themselves to walls
and dream of sprinkled lawns and tom-tom drums.
On the station they’ll be singing
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.

Back then I could not say where I was going
dust devils stirred at the crossroads
outside the Guangdong factory
where my father ordered next season’s
Valentine heart gorillas.
At night the library carrels were empty
as manuka stars flicked the dark
and blurred like grass blades on the edge
of a tea tree’s shade.

I had forgotten all that until this morning
when I told you how I’ve blotted out
some of the best hand drawn miniatures of my want.
You put down your fork and said
there’s a Bollywood song about two young innocents
who wait for a long departed train
they stare down the tracks to the dry far hills.
She sings “When did all the others
we could have met leave the station?”
That’s when the strings rise, the thunder breaks
and the rain comes. They race towards
each other as pink and purple garlands
fall from the sky, hand in hand
they begin to bhangra in time
from one supposed present to another.

All day he labours during lockdown
his pale fingers hammer keys, his bedroom office
a haven from the open plan melee of the lounge
where the kids do bursts of schoolwork
between Playstation rounds and skids of egg and beans
stick to unrinsed plates in the sink.

Each night, the film crew shoot their features –
drunk gaffer lighting, French film script, addled editing.
Beneath his velveteen frock coat, crimson toe-curled slippers
capped with bells jingle with each step he takes past
the crashed candelabra on the dinner table and out
through the open French doors to the guests
sleeping in the garden where with a pickpocket’s touch
he lifts the smouldering dimp from the corner
of his snoring uncle’s mouth and asks
“Has anyone seen the dog?”

Then wakes to a winter storm battering the house
the rain blurred yellow lights of the avenue
the dog, months dead, no longer needing his walk.
The kids will soon be up — there’s a good half-hour
for a coffee and a shave before morning emails.
That night the crew will be back and with them
the chance to see departed friends as he steps
through the bedroom window without a clue
as to which street he lives on or where he’ll be going.