No Amnesty for Absent Men
My new brother introduced himself online one summer
Can I tell you dust to dust
when you pop up remote & unbidden
early in August 2016
saying you’ve been looking for me
& — I love this —
‘we are in fact brothers’?
Blood ties but only through ebony voids
where fathers should be.
A tepid relationship with fidelity
& convention is noted & well said
& I agree neither of us saw him again…
…I understand your anger… but ….
Was it five children and seven wives
or five wives, seven children?
Transposing may be partly denial.
I keep hanging on to my position
in this vast strata of family lines.
You, admittedly, arrived first & may be excused ire.
Yet I am first of the next batch
(prettier wife you begrudgingly said)
& need to make clear —
I wish you didn’t hate our father
& saw instead the headline to his act
‘Dublin orphan given away to clueless
English couple’ whose name we bear.
Don’t underdogs deserve an advocate?
Diabetes took his feet at the end
& not one of us pitched up with a bucket.
You must agree it’s too easy to draw a monster
furiously colouring his empty spaces
bitter crayons angry & drawing outside the lines.
I saw only a man running for his life.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
