Can you rouse your future
without looking at your palms?

Whilst they are pressed together
will you forget your past?

Each space between each timber
appears much tighter now

as if my clenched memory
has squeezed a recall held

She sells to opened hands
once her’s has weighed your coin –

palmistry is a sideshow
positioned to profit a void

I watch you squint in daylight
and take those four steps down

I watch those gaps expand again
as if they wish you drowned

It may have been the 1970s –
it may have been Brighton –
but no one can confirm
when my father saved a pier

I was railing high –
navigating the gaps in the planks
with a slender fear –
a cheap thrill
as you walked above the sea –

and below – under the bolted timber –
waves hypnotised the iron work

The tang of salt over candyfloss
was taken up like Friars’ Balsam
through your head –
as we passed the rides
Dad saw smoke

a daft smoulder rising up
from the deck
and we stopped – bent –
to look for timbers –
for them burning

but it was just
a cigarette butt
still curling

PC 883 -as he was at work –
called out to an attendant
and the fag was drowned
with a red bucket –
marked ‘FIRE’

 

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