The Sunday Poem: Dad As Voyager by Will Eaves

Your mission: to give audibility

and capture the slip.

The hard, mad thing to say

(and say it while there’s battery)?

Perhaps we don’t conclude

anything, perhaps the needle

never lifts and your words stay

in the hiss of Oort,

an empty welter where the past

spins round apologies

for having left it so long, for

not thanking me. (For what?)

“I meant to say,” you said before

I interrupted you. “Can you

hear me?” I asked, frowning

at my end, almost with a shout.

Will Eaves is an award-winning writer and poet who won the 2019 Wellcome prize for his novel Murmur. His most recent book is the poetry collection Invasion of the Polyhedrons (CB Editions)

Illustration by Chris Riddell