Reminders
Last year’s today pops up in my timeline
with a look of reproach, though in truth, I’m
smiling with the gormless happiness of a man out
on the town, completely without self-awareness,
which is what I’m gifted like a shard of ice
to the gut a year later when the photo pops up.
This is what I get when I stare in the mirror
lately: the distinct impression that the other
bloke is not impressed, but is keeping it to
himself, biding his time, playing his cards close
to his chest. The white noise of Tokyo traffic
tides past my hotel window, while I try to capture
big and desperate feelings with chatty messages
home and love hearts and receive terse updates
pinged back from the other side of the world and
the stiff gangle of my son’s Formal photos,
all red embarrassment, acne and the look
of someone walking into uncertainty or their
own execution, which is the same thing, and
I realise I have no shots of you, to pop up at
random on my phone and trouble my conscience.
This is the business traveller’s lament, perched
on crisp turn-down, high and frothy as the foam
on a Sapporo, watching the exuberant slapstick
of a foreign aesthetic. All I have for a poem is
gnomic cleverness punched out of my head like a
subway train ticket: it’s easier to take someone for
granted when they’re in front of you. If you’re
not sure who’s at fault, it’s probably you.