Category: Passages

17 ½, last year at high school
first contact with a woman
other than
fumble and squeeze.
Almost boyfriend and girlfriend
1970’s, disco and strobe
I couldn’t retell the colour of her hair that first night
golden seemed too glib, too clichéd.
It would remain undefined –
for seven years,
until I saw tablecloths of wheat fields.

Three months gone before I turned 18,
lonely lecture theatres and oratory’s
ache kept a look out for
virtual lookalike or call back.
Constant thoughts, every day – several times daily
four, perhaps eight months
then one day they stopped
not planned, not stared down, just migrated
to another country, another season.
Still,
wind flicked memory debris would sometimes remember
when disco was hot
and punk rock was young.
Did she too?
Or how we resisted – first time for both?

Age 46 we are boarding the same flight
she doesn’t recognise me.

From India they came,
to small lands barely 100 years old –
the biggest war less than two decades finished.
Mother, father, two little boys
young family and a young paradise, they hoped.
Coming to a good job
and almost good suburb.

Ebony and Ivory, they were
first day at kindergarten, primary school, high school
and university
knew each other 17 of 20 years
and their mothers
bound by children’s education
and same street address.

Jeff said his mother spoke of how it had been
Romi’s mum told of not quite racism ..
of soto voce… feelings that caught
… the only Asian family in the street …
how it lasted more than a few years,
and took a long time,
a very long time to disappear completely.
He said you could imagine the surprise when
a Polynesian family moved to the street
and Romi’s mother sighed,
for the neighbourhood,
wondering of property values and tone.