The olfactory hit kicks in –
smelling at a filed return
of youthful tree climbing –
of guns-made-from-sticks …/
It is as if
you were delivered to us
to bear witness …/
Weird kids never came out –
not back then –
that’s why they were not in
our rushed pack
of loosely herded imaginations
running under the command of
Up to the ruins! …/
We’d race to get the telephone –
stating our number as rote taught –
our mother in her poshest voice
but rough for sister talk …/
Under the trees we find the path –
that one we missed last time –
and climb above the flood plain
on which – five miles downstream –
fools build fifty-four homes …/
A phone captured moment
of your recent childhood –
which I am guilty
of having forgotten …/
In the dream there were scatterings
of things you had bought and then kept
Small gifts from a trip which were never given –
a sprinkle of purchased intentions …
Grandfather was of a slipped generation,
with his Bakelite twirled-to radio stations….
In the airless cupboard
of our sixties new-build,
in that three storey house,
up on the second floor…
A son: Thomas Howard,
Fourteen years old,
Was lain, hardly checked,
To enter the cold: