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.
By David Selzer