Looking backwards

Asked again if I'm a professor or a lecturer, many of the young students find it hard to believe that I'm doing an undergraduate degree. This is understandable given my greying, receding hair. But I do find study enjoyable.
Study here also enables you to look back on your life in Australia … step away from the daily push and pull of life. Although I do receive the Google Alerts for Shoalhaven City Council [wind storms in the city damaging council property]; a reminder that life doesn't leave you. It's just that you find a different perspective on how to look on developments and changes in your life.
Also talking with young students -- mostly from Hong Kong or mainland China -- it is a reminder that any are dealing with study, gaining life experiences, expectations of parents, looking to job opportunities in Hong Kong, and dealing with the demands of course study. And mostly they are achieving this in English, which is a complex little baby. I'm glad I won't have to conquer this language as an adult. Underneath this there is a desire to perform [much like many of the international students]; there is also a love of learning and the enjoyment of the value of discovery. They might not express it like this, but it is there.
I thought that today is a good time to reflect on my time away from the family. This is part of a brief poem from Carol Anne Duffy, a constant favourite. She is now the Poet Laureate for England. Following in the footsteps of many great poets, such as Ted Hughes and Andrew Motion. This one is for Jenne. I miss you more than I thought I would. And to explain for my three readers, Jenne has been forgiving and willing to let me go voyaging on this discovery.
If you do find the time, find Duffy's other poems, such as Warming Her Pearls. They are drops of delight in an otherwise global and increasingly financially cluttered world. Like enjoying a sweet sugary dusted Turkish delight made with rosewater.
This Shape, Carol Ann Duffy
This shape is a rose, protect it, pure, it's pure.
Preserve it. Already evening unfolds you
before me. Naked, entwined, standing
in a sheet against a wall. This shape.

My lips tremble on its delicate brim
and dare to gather the drops which fall.
Your milk swells my throat to the neck of a dove.
O stay. Rose with pearl petals, remain.

...

Sleeper, your body. This shape, extraoidrinary.
Creamy almond, star, o curled up chhild.
A tingling stir of blood in the blue departure
of evening. A naked foot sounding on the grass.

No picture. I'm posting this in the library. besides the whispering pink Hong Kong students.