Friday, 22 November 2024

Nick Browne: The Road to Ethiopia

i.
Each day at nursery you’d cling,
an angry monkey scarfed around my neck.
Detached with kindness from my arms,
I’d hover in the vestibule to wait
for Rosemary to whisper you were fine,
though leaving was a trick I had to learn.

ii.
Your leg meccanoed into place,
immobilised and morphined into calm,
I left you in the hospital in Leeds,
wrapped my car around a pillar on the way.
The motorway’s a rod that spanned the space
through me and to the setting of your bones.

iii.
The airport and your luggage for three years
teeters on a caravan of carts.
We’re masked and must be distanced in this hall,
a practise for the distancing to come.
And I the monkey scarfed around your neck,
this leaving is a trick I’ve yet to learn.


Nick Browne is an established novelist. Nick’s poetry has been published by Acumen, Ink Sweat & Tears, Blue Nib, Snakeskin, Archaeology Today, Anthropecene, Wivanhoe, Lunar Magazine and Dreich and has appeared in several anthologies. Nick has collaborated with award winning painter, Laura Matthews on her recent exhibition ‘Flux’.