Conversations I Do Not Have

For some time I have been wanting to tell a friend
she looks rather like Queen Mary.
All she needs is a toque, a long dress, pearls—
a great many of them—and a furled parasol
but I don’t say this because I don’t think she’d like it
and certainly wouldn’t approve of the Queen’s habit
of embarrassing her hosts into parting
with their prized antiques. And my friend
would take a dim view of anyone who collected Fabergé.
So that is one conversation, admittedly trivial,
which I do not have.

Another conversation disallowed is when I’m a guest at dinner
and find on the table what looks like a dead fish.
Pallid and moist, it is actually a moulded concoction
involving a tin of tuna and a great deal of effort
but the effect is irretrievably of something on a mortuary slab,
which no profusion of sliced lemon can dispel.
Clearly, praise is expected. Cravenly I oblige,
with words as bland as I know the thing will taste.

Christmases and birthdays are challenging of that
which must remain unsaid. The ribbons cut,
the wrappings dropped in bright confusion on the floor
and the dreaded garment held aloft for the white lies
of gratitude—as I remember the book I cannot read,
the earrings I will never wear and the nougat I dislike.

Funerals also impose their discipline and sometimes stupefaction.
Who was this man they eulogise? I do not think I knew
this loving husband—selfish and obsessed with golf,
or that devoted father, whose children couldn’t wait to leave home,
not to mention generous to a fault—who never had a wallet
when the time came to pay the bill.

Oh let me speak of weather! That is surely safer,
so easy to agree the wind is fresh and yes, it looks like rain
but on hearing that a cold snap is predicted
I do not dare to voice the hope that I will wake next day
to Sydney’s freakish fall of snow.
From my window, through drifting flakes,
I’ll find familiar townscape in a white disguise,
leafless trees redrawn with snow and parked cars
softly blanketed, all traffic stilled, the silence absolute.