THE CUP AND SAUCER

For Christopher and Jane Ireland

When my cousin and I actually meet

after fifty years and eighteen thousand miles

apart, we exchange gifts – objects that had once

belonged to our respective fathers, objects

that somehow, as things sometimes do,

had strayed across continents and oceans:

his father’s – five Oxford Pocket Classics;

mine – a first birthday gift, a small, engraved

silver cup and saucer made in Birmingham.

Our fathers – brothers-in-law – never met.

They were more or less the same age. His died

in old age; mine, in his twenties, from sepsis.

I never met my father. One Boxing Day

his father took me to a rugby match.

Life per se has no purpose, much less meaning –

only love, memories, trivia:

like holding this untarnished cup and saucer

in the palm of my hand.