EMPTY HANDS
We were mere babies then
before we sailed
the length
of the Atlantic
to find our new
colonial home
and there you are
in that photograph
English Catholic rose
of Norman Viking origin
young and lovely
twenty-five, twenty-
six
by my reckoning
pushing my sister and me
across the Tame River bridge
in the heart
of that old
mill
town
and all of us
arriving home safely,
without a scratch
in this scenario
but not
in the other one
the alternate
universe
one
where you lost us, lost
everything dropped
pram
from bridge into
the river
and the two of us
not having
read that book, kind
of hopeless as
water babies, swept
along by the river
past Anfield, past
Goodison
past
Ringo, John George
and Paul not together
as
a band
down into
the Irish sea via
the estuary thence
to Ireland
my Mother, in
this rather
different
scenario
returning home with empty hands.
