Michael J. Leach Time Travel Callan Park, Sydney, November 2018 Leaving this manor house’s veranda, we stroll by a purple jacaranda to find some native shade where the modern world fades to sounds of poetry—sweet memoranda. Easy My new friend from Germany asks me in perfect English if I know any German. My response comes quickly. ‘Einfach,’ I mispronounce softly. After a pause, I proceed to share the distant memory surfaced by this single word. I was in a silent secondary school library where the 2 cultures meet, studying for my year 12 unit ‘Specialist Mathematics’. A friend from my English class was sitting across from me studying German. Red pen in hand, she reached over to my page full of complex planes & imaginary numbers to scrawl a single word in the margin: ‘Einfach’. I looked up at her quizzically. ‘It means easy,’ she whispered with a quokka grin. ‘That maths you’re studying is easy compared to the language I’m studying.’ ‘Agreed,’ I breathed. My mouth & eyes smile at this long-forgotten recollection as I study my new friend from Germany. In response to my anecdote, she mirrors my smiles & declares in perfect Denglish, ‘Well, for me, German’s einfach.’ Life LocksMichael J. Leach is an Australian academic and poet. His poems reside in Cordite, Rabbit, Meniscus, Otoliths, Plumwood Mountain, The Blue Nib, Blue Bottle Journal, the Medical Journal of Australia, the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, and elsewhere. Michael’s debut poetry collection is the chapbook Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020). He lives on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung Country and acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land.
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