Twenty-two years
since I last heard your voice, or saw you step off the plane at 76, quite an age to emigrate, newspaper in hand as my mother pushed the trolley, aware you weren’t quite the man you used to be, unaware of what you brought by merely being there, grasping your trusty cherry wood walking stick shiny handled from all the years of grasping, time enough to scrape a meeting with my son, who grew up not knowing what he missed— yet still that great grey slab of time keeps stretching, getting no more distant for being more thinly stretched week by year by decade, and now you’re doubling back two countries ago, tea-towel slung over your shoulder, pouring a glass of red and flipping potatoes in olive oil, steadying the fry-pan with the wobbly black handle as I slice garlic and onion, and tear off a chunk of bread, jamming it between my lips as my mother taught me to shore up the watering in my eyes. First published in Tarot (Issue 1), New Zealand, 1 December 2020 https://www.tarotpoetry.nz/ Author bio: Denise O’Hagan is an award-winning editor and poet, born in Rome and based in Sydney. With a background in commercial book publishing in London and Sydney, she set up her own imprint, Black Quill Press, in 2015 to assist independent authors. Recipient of the Dalkey Poetry Prize, her work appears in various journals including The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Quadrant, Books Ireland, Eureka Street and Hecate. Her second poetry collection, Anamnesis, is due to be published in October 2022 (Recent Work Press). https://denise-ohagan.com
Fevers of the Mind 