#1442 - returning to the scene

 

1442

4.346

13.xii.23

returning to the scene

 

there isn’t a place where my parents are now

you won’t find a stone with their names

 

to fade to time

 

I get it

 

I’m not pretending

 

I know words are the best we will be

 

they’re the way

have a hunch

I hear

harbour laps

with news from the office, the classroom

with gossip

 

come home like Mr Murphy

on the ferry

commuter mongrel

and one day must have met someone

stayed in town

 

or one might paint a picture

so many objects outlast

 

here’s Percy, in the block up above

old mad coot

turned off the water

because he could

 

ancient already in the olden times

 

there is nowhere my parents are now

 

nor can they see beyond themselves

to what I’d rather be

 

they’re in print

in piles

I make my way

 

and everything that worried them –

nothing now

 

no trouble

no right mind for them to be in

 

of course one cannot know  

 

there was always the harbour down from their hill

 

still laps

 

I’m proud they would be proud of me

 

tide in out where we set them afloat

together again

 

and if it’s a voyage

or whether it’s not

I come here to think of them