You ask of me a thing I baulk to give;
Confessionals of love are private land
And yet you ask that I should publicise
In verse my weaknesses for all the world.
Does not the player have a right to wear
A mask to hide the man behind the part?
So much of what I am is deep submerged
Behind a mask I grew at boarding school
To hide the way I felt and to conform
To norms that lay within unwritten lore.

A dozen years of this from age of six
Was time enough to print a mould on me
Of self-sufficiency that stood me well
For years in squadron service for the Queen,
Until I reached the age of thirty eight
And left my native land and safety net;
A happy choice that put me in free fall;

A new Australian land, new family
And back to school to gain a new degree;
Four years to learn to teach, to teach to learn,
The only job three hundred miles away
So three more years, by road four hours apart,
Your mother left to hold the fort alone
With little help from me. I was not there
Except most fleetingly, and once again
I wore a mask of self-sufficiency,
A mask that hid deep sadness as I saw
Your days of early childhood slip away.
It was a Janus mask; one face looked back
At family, the other one ahead,
To carve a niche within a new career.