Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry

Every time, three mornings a week,
for five or seven years
she smiled with warmth and without effort
clipped the ticket – literally
one less swim from a 20-visit concession –
3×20 gave a free 10
issuing the loyalty card always produced an extra wide smile,
something she genuinely enjoyed, considered a privilege to do so.
Once or twice I forgot, rummaging through my bag
coming up empty-handed,
“ that’s alright,” she snapped the air
“ you come here often enough. ”
When offered the arrears, she waved them away
saying again, “ you come here often enough.”

I never knew her name, never thought to ask,
never overheard it used, or called,
later I imagined I must have. But know I didn’t.
She was just the very nice woman on the front desk.
Until,
18 years later,
when late middle age needed to get a grip
and returned to swimming.
She wasn’t there the first two months,
then one Monday morning about the same time
I was holding laminated plastic to a scanner
as I would have been handing cardboard to her
a photo was being attached to the wall above the front desk,
with an inscription,
almost exactly behind where she stood –
“ So long Lovely Jill, rest in peace.”

Everything was formal at the new school –
the one with the black robed clergyman,
11, most of us, some 12, but all
feeling much younger
an overwhelmed, scared if truth had been.

There were no Steves or Phils
no Petes or Andys
only Stephen and Phillip and Peter and Andrew,
even when they never had been.
Except Ed
never Edward, even though he was.

An athlete : hand and eye
good with a bat and ball – like DiMaggio –
a standout.
Different in other ways too.
No present father, just absent, not dead
the term solo mother yet to exist
but his mum was.
I sometimes wonder how they afforded it
later enlightenment concluded, perhaps welfare.

Which might explain, what I thought preposterous –
what he told me once we were good buddies.
That he would say
a teacher, a man of God,
would touch there, and in that way.
I didn’t believe him then. I do now.

Applause greeted the end of the presentation
warm applause,
impressed applause,
respectful applause.
For almost 90 minutes he held attention captive with
presentation and Q& A
smooth, fluid speaking
nuauced, thoughtful answers.

Environmental integrity and ecological commitment
not so much coated in, as impregnated.
Integrity.

In the mid-1980s I watched
with a blend of outrage and marvel
pre-Greenpeace old inorganic material –
transformers, truck bodies, refrigerators
were placed on the McMurdo Sound’s frozen waters
dissolving from view with the dissolving ice.

The speaker had been a senior manager
no mention of the then environmental vandalism
an eco-warrior now.