(E.R. 1926–2022)

2 am. Prompter than usual. Nocturnal emails,
a commonplace book to aphorise – fillipia!              
I write to someone in Oxford, then Wagga,
pondering the etiquette of commissioning
in the middle of the night.
Then, reading them to myself lowly,
I happen upon some poems by Hardy,
dismissed as a ‘practitioner’ by T.S. Eliot,
who was deemed ‘styptical’ by Christopher Ricks,
whom I also read on Philip Larkin – Required Writing.
I hunt for my old Faber copy on the shelves, fruitless.
Now it’s time to mortify my journal,
followed by a first cup of coffee.
Waiting for it to brew I listen to the 4 am news.
The opposition leader, despite Covid,
remains vigilant, like the Queen with her infernal boxes,
age notwithstanding, nor viduity, nor Prince Andrew.
Meanwhile the US president sends Ukraine
another billion dollars in arms –
plus his handsome secretary of state.
It sounds like too much but never enough.
Flexing my back, aware of winter’s first chill,
I think of you lying there on your electric blanket
all night long, listening to the news on the hour,
avid, foetal, sleepless, unwarmable,
shocked always when the ABC newsreader
identifies himself as David Rowlands,
the father who stopped sending you bulletins
when you were three, never to be heard from again.
            Except you’re not there.