The year his father died
my father, twelve, sat alone
in the first row of a cinema
watching 2001: A Space Odyssey

dwarfed by unreachable stars
the ship's slow twirl
the astronaut's bright, lost gaze

Though not mine, this memory
is how I see him:
a boy in awe of the uncontainable,
framing spectacle without specifics

He retreated to the impossibility
of space, to comics, to science,
away from neighbourhood bullies
and an indifferent mother

Now his body folds inwards
when I raise my voice a third time
so he hears me beside him
over the dam of his failing ears

The boy still chasing love
surrounds himself with people
who don't know he cannot hear.

Or cannot hear enough to listen.
Enough just to orbit
what he cannot reach. A blithe
spaceman adrift in mute light.