In Medias Res

by Paul Connolly

He begins in the middle of the stairs
in the midst of the midmorning pallor,
inside her smell and the sense
of him, tremor of him,
in the post office smell 
odour of postal orders,
Formica, dust from the table
he’d cut himself against
in the bedroom, as he knew at once,
he knew everything at once

and would know everything again
when twenty-five years
brought him back to his beginning
in the midst of things, in the middle
of the staircase, slumped and weeping
in the glare, in her smell and the sense
of him, yes him again, 
in wholeness, throughout and encompassing,
between past afreight
with its inescapable vacancy of happenings
gone and all the imagined exits 
that vacancy bars en masse.

I should have stayed there
he thinks much later,
I must return and sit
sure this time, silent
and content in the middle of the stairs,
the point where I know everything.

Paul Connolly’s poems have appeared in Agenda, The Warwick Review, Poetry Salzburg, Stand Magazine, The Reader, Scintilla, Chiron Review (USA), Dawntreader, Takahē (New Zealand), Dream Catcher, Orbis, The Journal, FourXFour, The Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, Envoi, Obsessed with Pipework, The Bombay Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Southlight, The High Window, Eunoia Review (Singapore), Canada Quarterly, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Honest Ulsterman, Northampton Poetry Review, London Grip, and Quadrant (Australia). Shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize, he was highly commended in the Sentinel Quarterly and third in the Magna Carta Competitions. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first novel, Work, longlisted for the Bridport Prize.