However, here it is.
The
Year of Travelling Backwards
Afterwards
he called it his year of travelling backwards,
because
someone, sometime, told him
sitting
with your back to the engine robs the body of its Chi.
That
vital energy seeps out.
It
wasn't actually a year but nine months of directionlessness,
of
being able only to understand events once they had happened.
Unable
to make sense of where he was,
until
he was somewhere different.
The
latest economic slump had dictated
that
he reapply for his own job,
which
of course, he did not get.
So
he was shunted round the organisation,
slotted
into every interview,
in
front of panels of resentful faces,
who
did not want him either.
These
scenes were interspersed
with
hospital silences, his father,
trapped
between starched white sheets,
slowly
leaving his life.
Than
before he knew he was:
unemployed,
at
the church,
burying
his father.
From
some things you don't bounce back,
perhaps
as you age the spring goes,
and
once you've seen it all before
fake
enthusiasm is never an option.
He
had been in a carriage facing backwards,
then he was off the train.
He
left the station.
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