Peter McDonald

The back roads

You had come so close, that when I woke
to the phone, and answered half-asleep,
there was a voice from the dead that spoke
to a sunken distance - faint, miles deep -

at a loss to figure some way back
and calling from the further bank
to the son who lost you - who lost track
of plastic boats that dipped and sank,

or a kite that crashed at the Giant's Ring,
the loop-the-loops and vanishing-tricks
of gliders, tangled yards of string,
then crumpled balsa and splintered sticks

all lost, and your voice with them lost -
but I came to, and the voice was real,
no rivers and no lines were crossed,
no boat with a crimped and crinkled sail

or aeroplane with bent-back wings
had come to grief in the water there;
as usual, we said usual things
on our back roads to everywhere.

(from Pastorals, 2004)