No claustrophobia in the cushioned casket
below on the freight deck
lying cold as the surrounding black sea
oblivious to the rhythmic engines
intoning a heartbeat for dad’s return voyage away
East from Port Jackson and us.
On that last leg he missed Neptune’s appearance above decks
crossing the Equator, where he previously roistered,
Sydney-bound, in late ‘41.
Sailed past tarnished Liberty’s sputtering torch
to a familiar New York dock
& trucked upriver to the Mohawk Valley
as forests swayed, robed
gold and red in ceremony.
He was laid in his childhood ground
where an Iroquois stone arrowhead turned up
and later a deerslayer’s musket ball,
as the diggers opened his destination.
Our shattered family, like Morrrison sang
“never never never wondered why lord!”,
that his proprietorial aunt persuaded mum,
before her six months in Callan Park,
that his remains must remain
half a world away…
to placate her family ghosts.
Rudderless, we drifted on:-
a devastated widow’s weeping memories,
a daughter’s infantile recollections
& my “Boys’ Own” reminiscence
of his nine years with me until,
twenty years on, this scribing hand
rested on his cool granite headstone,
in lieu of a handshake.