DAVID O'MEARA: A POEM



David O'Meara
DAYS

We keep forgetting something back there, don't we?
We pop out the door, turn corners, the shops unchanged,
but data nags like a black box has signalled

from the wreckage, or a high voice is calling down
a long street across medians of statued piazzas,
river bends, concert halls (vertigo in the nosebleeds), barista
beards at homogeneous counters, X-rayed luggage,

passport please, carousel fatigue, caffeinated reveries in taxis,
the balcony's very non-sea view, our frugal mattress picnics
watching own-goals in stoppage time, the must-sees we didn't, phone
calls, emails, our return's fine-toothing of apartment vacancies

with thoughts that nothing would change, as if we'd rush back
through traffic, across three continents, a decade, to find
my father still alive, the cat at its bowl, and the iron left on.


from Masses on Radar (Coach House, 2021). Reproduced with permission of the author



Comments

  1. Whoosh. A terrific poem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't it? Thanks for reading!

      Delete
  2. I like how the poem turns from considerations of travel through space to considerations of the passage of time wherein nothing changes (much). Love that hinge expression: "carousel fatigue" – it captures the ethos of the poem in a striking epithet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The turns, exactly! Thanks for reading.

      Delete

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