The Ever Given

Even Farmers wouldn’t give us credit
to buy a cutlery set because we owed
no one anything back then and friends
gave us shelter housing us and our Aiwa

That had come from London with us
through the newly opened Suez
all the way from Shepherds Bush
with Bohemian Rhapsody on vinyl

We saw King Tut in situ and a small boy
in Somalia, living in a Sony TV carton
A man with a gun patrolled The Sphinx
In Cairo, but there were very few tourists

In Auckland, my sister met our ship
which if you knew her was a bold and
beautiful moment for us all, but more in
retrospect as many things in life are

We were home with 50 cents between us
relying on friends with kids and a spare
bedroom, determined never to succumb
to suburbia, certain we knew better

When the ‘Ever Given’ blocked the Suez
recently, we marvelled at just how narrow
the canal really is and how tall the ship was
laden with who knows what, people

speculated, perhaps needles for our
vaccine roll-out, or fabric for front-line
workers… people worried because a
shipment of sex toys was stranded

not all happy endings can be bought
and paid for and we knew that
Like Freddy we’d tried to break free
Only to find a quiet beauty in domesticity

And now that we are officially elderly
we are grateful to the ‘Ever Given
reminding us we once sailed the Suez
homeward, filled with towering ambition
only to turn sideways and if not exactly
stuck, definitely frequently adrift