Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry

A diner. Zero tips. Large wages. Priceless location
Antarctica.
cleaning tables, washing pots, swabbing floors
subservient and cheerful
smile wide open. Opinions firmly closed.
Three meals – seven days – 1000 people.

Living was almost free
accommodation and food supplied. No charge.
Extravagant incomes
frugal expenses
instinct would expect gratitude. Not always.
Food was the linguistics of discontent. One couple fluent.

Adventure had not travelled south with them
entitlement made no allowance for geography.
Very married – inseparable.
they moved in a pod of suburban expectation.

To mealtimes they brought the presumptions of an owner
and a critic’s notebook.
At day’s end their table was a court – they minor monarchs
tables to be vacated by 8.oopm did not apply
to attempt enforcement was to invite intimidating temper.

Illusion is a heated balloon
beckoned by current
gravity suspended by artifice.
They were very married
the summers of their lives.
One season. Two hemispheres. Four people.

It doesn’t quite work
blunt humour and sharp asides
an immiscible blend of mateship and authority.
Rehearsed spontaneity
duets with artificial self deprecation
it brings to mind amateur dramatics.

For the next 12 months
he will be our guide, mentor, teacher
and for one or two …..executioner
the last difficult – but ruefully essential.

Our career path is demanding
high school teaching not for the uncommitted
but
we should be congratulated
for the foresight to choose this provider.
“Provider”
repeated – repeatedly.
He would like to tell us
would be irresponsible of him not to
this provider is without parallel – graduates eagerly sought.

The programme
always highly regarded
but recently improved by substantial revision
a process with which he was closely associated
“we would be foolish not to mine his expertise.”

It is two decades since he faced
adolescent curve balls in the classroom
but that is of no concern
he had been a very good teacher
exceptional
one of the best.
We know that – he told us.

The phone call goes past three hours
into a new day, month and year
the last dark of December
a time of abandonment and resolution.

It was a resolution to abandon – marriage
he told her that night.
They had been ten years by then
a decade
the fault line along which relationships rupture.

Her words shaking and raw
rush from the earpiece
panic stricken rummaging for a lost heirloom
indiscriminate objects hurled from confused drawers
harmless paper and lethal paperweights.

Tears subside into ill-equipped optimism
a lifeboat can be launched.
Just the two of them
shore is some way off ….. but lights are visible.
Paradise can be regained – what are my thoughts?

Irony has its own malice
the listener for hope
“proudly”
speaks her mind
even when people would rather not hear
now she doesn’t. Truth or dare?

Their life together was a series of inadequate practises
reading from the script
not committing the lines.
Dress rehearsal forgives skipped passages
centre stage punishes.
Truth?
I didn’t dare. It would have been suicidal.