The minute hand of the rusty red clock falls up, ready to rest at ten pm; Endless love playing on the Radio, small talk about the kids and the movie Calvary which numbed us, yet stirred feelings of absence still buried, hidden beneath the grevillea bowed over my parents’ graves somewhere in Mundaring: six inches down, the urns that contain them; the gravel silent underfoot as the wind blows ice cold over the city from frozen southern seas; look up from the couch, the hand falls up once more, strikes eleven and it’s been a long time since we put the kids to bed or I’ve kissed my father’s dying brow as he laid out his regrets like a confession and wasted away. Even if the time is wrong, the clock never is.
Christopher Konrad is a Western Australian writer and has poems and short stories published in many journals and on line. He has received many awards for his writing and his recent book Letters to Mark was published by Regime Books, 2014. He currently teaches Social Sciences in Melbourne.