Naomi
Old Naomi’s thinking now about the day
On which she’d been all set to walk away
Her cases had been packed, a short note written,
And she was quite resigned to leave the kitten,
The CDs and the Kenwood Magimix
That she’d brought here from number twenty-six.
She was prepared to leave it all, to be
Free of all this, and free of Anthony.
But she hadn’t gone. She’d stood there in the hall,
Bags packed and ready just to chuck it all,
But outside it had started then to rain,
And she worried now if she’d quite catch the train
Back to her mother’s, and she didn’t know
Quite why she stayed there, but she didn’t go,
Unpacked the bags, then, and tore up the note,
And cried a little, like a silly goat,
And thought, ‘Well, Anthony is not so bad.’
Now, fifty years on, she wonders: If she had...
Old Naomi’s read about the theory
That every possibility must be
Real somewhere in the quantum multiverse
When new worlds (billions better, billions worse)
Are generated with each tick of time.
So does this mean, she asks, that I’m -
Or other mes are – in some great elsewhere,
The kind of woman who got out of there?
And somewhere in that infinite Multiverse
Do other Naomis still grimly nurse
Their dark resentment against Anthony?
While others have forgotten him and, free,
Have made of life a something wonderful,
And so have cause to never ever mull
The things they chose, or what they didn’t choose
Or worry what they lost or didn’t lose.
There are so many paths she could have trod...
So many many paths, but bloody God
Has fixed it so we get one single life,
And in hers somehow she has stayed a wife.
Weeks after that daft bodged departure she
Was jolted by the signs of pregnancy,
And Anthony was great and overjoyed,
And then she didn’t get so damn annoyed
With him so much; he helped her keep a grip;
Together they were quite a partnership,
And when the kids came, he was a good dad;
Compared with most men, he’s been not so bad,
And yes, she loves him, and well, yes, maybe
That was the reason she chose not to flee.
Or was it? Now and then her mind goes back
Accusingly; she knows there was a lack...
It was a loss of nerve, she admits quite sadly.
Yet after all, it’s not turned out so badly.
George Simmers
If you have any thoughts
about this poem, George Simmers
would like to hear them
