Somewhere in the past that never was, an old man
staggers down to a telephone box, pockets heavy
with coin to call his son, but never enough to last
while whoever takes the call at the college shouts
through the intercom and the son comes running
across the quad. The last coin falls down the slot
as the breathless boy hears his father’s voice just
before the line goes dead. So it goes on, to a time
when father is first to settle into the loam below
the jacaranda, to be followed years later by mother,
pibroched under broken ground by a hired piper.
Together they lie beneath the lawn, carpeted every
October by purple flowers, a place of returns that
start again what never really was a conversation.

Somewhere there is a blaze as the sun goes down
in the west, viewed from the apartment balcony
that never was, over the flower box in which he
grew roses as bright a yellow as the cassias that
line Dornoch Terrace in April, when the cyclists
speed in pelotons down Highgate Hill, travelling
too fast to smell the flora, oblivious to mortal
peril. Beyond the edge of the balcony, below it,
rises a branch of the jacaranda where the tawny
frogmouths nest. Whenever a fledgeling falls,
there is an opportunity for flight. He looks out,
singing to his guitar, to practice, for a wedding,
the Tiree Love Song. They cannot afford to stay
in this place, but she will come away with him.

Together they travel through east coast towns,
always dreaming of return to Dornoch Vista
on the rise above the snaking river. Sometimes
they travel to his ancestral home in the isles,
lie down on the Soroby turf, in the cemetery,
beneath the stone cross, listening to the chiefs
of Clan Maclean talking battle from their bones,
crying out he must return to the place he knows
is a place that never was, but must also visit
the Hebrides, to run on the Gott Bay beach,
imagine the airy scent of heather as he climbs
Dun Mor Vaul, but live to reclaim the home
above the jacaranda, where the cassias line
the street, back in time, before the piper calls.

 **

Andrew Leggett is an Australian writer and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic paper and songs. His latest collection of poetry Losing Touch was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents