If you ask me, us takes in undulations –
each wave in the sea, all insides compressed –
as if, from one coast, you could reach out to
the next; and maybe it’s a Midlands thing
but when I was young, us equally meant me,
says the one, ‘Oi, you, tell us where yer from’;
and the way supporters share the one fate –
I, being one, am Liverpool no less –
cresting the Mexican wave of we or us,
a shore-like state, two places at once, God
knows what’s in it; and, at opposite ends
my heart’s sunk at separations of us.
When it comes to us, colour me unsure.
Something in me, or it, has failed the course.
I’d love to think I could stretch to it – us –
but the waves therein are too wide for words.
I hope you get, here, where I’m coming from.
I hope you’re with me on this – between love
and loss – where I’d give myself away, stranded
as if the universe is a matter of one stress.
Us. I hope, from here on, I can say it
and though far-fetched, it won’t be too far wrong.
~ from Border Lines, Poems of Migration (Alfred A Knopf, 2020)
