Kamikaze

• "Her father embarked at sunrise

  with a flask of water, a samurai sword

  in the cockpit, a shaven head"
• "and enough fuel for a one-way

  journey into history"
• "he must have looked far down

  at the little fishing boats"
• "and remembered how he

  and his brothers waiting on the shore

  built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles"
• "the loose silver of whitebait and once

  a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous"
• "And though he came back

  my mother never spoke again

  in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes"
• "and the neighbours too, they treated him

  as though he no longer existed,

  only we children still chattered and laughed"
• "was no longer the father we loved"
• "till gradually we too learned

  to be silent, to live as though

  he had never returned, ..."
• "And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered

  which had been the better way to die."