All poets sift their childhood for subject matter, and some experiences surface more readily than others.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
It was winter, several weeks from his fifth birthday
when his father left him at grandmother’s farm.
No memory of a parting, perhaps its casualness
the catalyst for future ambivalence?
Years later partial memories surface:
silk slide on thigh in his aunt’s narrow bed
tea-time excitement by her side
as she soared above her dour brothers
and danced the worn breadknife
in her mother’s impassive face —
owning the moment until the matriarch
resumed power with pilchards,
bowl upended over daughter’s head.
In the petrified silence, stripes,
glistening stripes of gutted fish in blood-red sauce,
swam slowly through immaculate curls.
In the outside toilet’s candle-lit terror
fear was distortion of the known.
Where, however carefully and often
he applied the coarse, waste paper
arse-wiping properly proved impossible.
Squawk-barks of matriarchal rage
proclaimed any shaming stripes,
daily, at the underpants ritual exposure .
Expelled from the farm around his fifth birthday,
the child feared his Whooping Cough’s
persistent barking had lost him his place?
There was indeed a loss – his displacement
announced by stripes, pink and white stripes
of the shawl around the unknown new sister.
Nothing was said—of his dispatch or her arrival,
a poor introduction – from which neither recovered
