It seems only yesterday a disorienting sense

of unease, and the shrinking autumn sun,

and the scattering leaves of the plane

trees all told me it was time

to escape these iron-born, sky-wrapping clouds,

and drive, or fly, or take a (now impossible) train
journey to you. For years I’d needed to train

myself to deal with the singularity of your absence,

with the state of living under different clouds,

in a different city to you, my old, only son

– with having to face these longitudes and time

zone discrepancies – and not just jump on a plane,        	
and land on your doorstep. The dry, boundless plain

that stretches between us, spanned only by dead train

lines and gouged-out roads and sheep, stretches Time

somehow, beyond borders or meridians, or a sense

of reality, and is measured in megalitres of sun,

wingbeats of crows, claps of thunder, and clouds	
– a  barrier as tangible and solid as brick. It clouds

our thinking, this quantity of distance that only a plane

can take on (devouring the miles while it races the sun).

Walking’s too slow (Life’s too short) and you hit rain

squalls and rockfalls in four-wheel-drives. In a sense,

they’re partners in crime:  fat Distance and hungry Time.	
But everything had changed this time.

My room was a prison I couldn’t leave. Clouds

of memories cast shadows of doubt and my sense

of gravity failed me. My eyes lied. A passing plane

flew tail-first across the sky. A passing train

of thought reified, opalescent in the west-rising sun.
And now nothing remains, including you, my son,

or not for me. I’ve crossed a line in Time

that no-one recrosses. The curtains of distant rain

always stay away, and their dark, mothering clouds

forever float far beyond my windowpane, in plain

sight but unknowable in this, my eternal loss of essence.	
I have a sense of it now: the relativity of Time

clouds the amplitudes of Distance on our brief train

journey across the endless plain and on, into the sun.