Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry

Names – come and go
and
apart from the safe, utilitarian, the boring :
John, Peter, Mary, Sue
mark an era or epoch
the rise of royalty, the fall of faith.
He was the only Lionel I ever knew,
a name on deathrow
disappearing from birth lexicon as he came into being.
The Lionel talking to the TV interviewer was
greying and receding – but definitely him.

Cut to
2 students vacation jobbing as farm labourers
both on the threshold
status: amorphous
no longer adolescent, not quite adult
no longer university
not yet career-ed –
the days of heaven.
Golden weather, decent pay, a good boss
hard work, physical, over in eight hours, the rest ours.
Mateship and ribaldry – keeping an eye on each other
and watching backs.
Cut back
a sombre man, burdened and wearied down
talking slowly
announcing the closure, and loss of 200 jobs.

It wasn’t official, or even informal
he became my boss, or at least immediate superior
in the same way kids become leaders
no official anointment, they just do,
and once established, status remains.
I was new, and eager to please –
may have been a solution requiring a problem.
However it happened, he just became
I never pondered or
questioned,
even absorbing or adopting some of his
mannerisms
vernacular
and
prejudices –
women, ethnicities, religion, unionism.

Even when the tongue that seem to have a bad word for everyone
lashed me
I still admired him
for his singularity,
even after I had left.

Ebb and flow
our paths diverged – diametrically – polar opposites
the wisdom of three decades plus
a little man, with testes descended swagger
and puberty-passed moustache
tough talk passport to pull up a barroom stool
and sit with deep voices who might otherwise ridicule him.

I didn’t know him then, or before,
but I knew those who did,
all said, he had it all –
top-class professional :
pretty wife and two beautiful children,
pedigree address
and had been really something in his youth.
The high school boy all high school girls wanted,
and maybe some older :
athlete, scholar, handsome, good guy.

Good friends went to see his wife afterwards
the six-year-old had a drawing to show them –
a road and a tree :
“ if daddy had this, it wouldn’t have happened.”
The coroner agreed,
adding work pressure, and alcohol, in that order.