Amanda

When I didn’t recognise the number
and saw the text with kisses, but no name —
‘Thinking of you: they’re playing Native New Yorker’,
I racked my brain and was filled with shame.
Was this the divorced father and one-night stand,
or was this someone who had heard me sing
in hospital when I was bored out of my mind,
or was this a teenage flame rekindling?
And then I was relieved to realise
it was not a blast from the past, but you
who heard me play that record in the Seventies
when we were small, who shared with me and knew
my childhood home, pets, dad and mum,
yet lost your own mother, aged so young.