Elsewhere
this frail, / Travelling coincidence
—Larkin
Which out of nowhere makes me think
about my mother playing marbles in the streets
of Singapore. Orchids, like an eye mid-blink,
strung up in glass like pink and blue sweets
clattering from her bag into the drain
and down the road. With tears in her eyes
she wandered home in the absolute rain.
When the time came she made her goodbyes
and went back to England. Or Hong Kong,
or Berlin – wherever she ended up I was there,
if no more than a pattern in a marble flung
down a street I might never see. Look—here
you can see all the way from my home
to where I drank tea with you in Morocco.
this frail, / Travelling coincidence
—Larkin
Which out of nowhere makes me think
about my mother playing marbles in the streets
of Singapore. Orchids, like an eye mid-blink,
strung up in glass like pink and blue sweets
clattering from her bag into the drain
and down the road. With tears in her eyes
she wandered home in the absolute rain.
When the time came she made her goodbyes
and went back to England. Or Hong Kong,
or Berlin – wherever she ended up I was there,
if no more than a pattern in a marble flung
down a street I might never see. Look—here
you can see all the way from my home
to where I drank tea with you in Morocco.
