Childhood poem, The beauty of it

And somewhere in the dark atlas of the mind Is the conceit in the relief of a journey that is signed.

Neither poetry nor memory is about the truth.

Welcome to this blog.  Within it, over the following weeks, I want to present a collection of poetry: Dark Atlas. The title comes from a poem within the collection. But I want  to start by looking at childhood and two earlier poems I wrote.

"Pieces", a prologue. Memory is a haphazard and sometimes unreliable 'search engine', unable, mostly, to retrieve fully formed narratives or pictures.

"The Beauty of It". Writing, I've found, has it's own agenda and if a piece is prompted by a memory, a feeling, something autobiographical, this is soon taken over by the 'life' of the writing, forming itself out of itself.

So a childood is good place to begin, part-remembered, part apocryphal, perhaps mine, probably somebody's.

Pieces

Life is made up of

Pieces of life:

It’s something dropped,

The whole finally

Irretrievable.

The beauty of it. (A Piece)

He crossed the road on his bike.

Was the car too close,

Did the horn blare,

The car skid and brake?

He doesn’t remember.

He doesn’t think so.

A family outing:

Mother, Father, son.

Where had they been?

What road were they on?

What rule was he flouting?

He doesn’t have a context.

The piece is small, a fragment.

How many beans …?

A cause and effect,

And the memory is stagnant.

He doesn’t remember the pain,

Just that there was pain.

It’s a kite tied to his wrist

And bullied by the air;

He struggles to let it soar –

It tugs and it twists.

Was it the stick, or the belt?

The arse or the legs?

(Where are the scars, the welts?

Have they healed or been sealed

In the skin, unforgiven?)

Did he squirm and beg?

Did he know it was coming?

The rest of the way home

His brain foaming,

His mind scrambling up a wall

It could never climb,

Unwilling to put into words,

Or pictures the punishment to come.

Or was it the first time?

Tempers overheated,

The lash of harsh word

And wagging-finger threat

Seeming chastisement enough,

Leaving him in a sulky slough,

As he pushed the bicycle homeward,

A pedal catching his calf,

Catching his calf.

But then

At home

The world - his world,

Such a small world – cracked;

The plates pushed askew,

Fault lines visible,

Continents torn;

And theirs, perhaps, too.

(Though wasn’t theirs just pasted over,

Plugged with duty, self-belief,

And love just not glue enough

To hold it all together?

And the stick becomes a baton

You have to run with, pass on,

The race never over, no line to cross,

And no one wins; the field is endless.)

And it’s always there, the flaw;

Hidden mostly, barely discernable,

But in a certain light …

In the garden, the sunshine slices

Through the tree, the fruit unripe,

Green and bitter,

Too early to be picked.

He looks at his daughter,

Tells her once more to climb down,

And this is the last time, or …

She swings on a branch, leaves flutter,

Light and shade jostle and mix.

She hangs, defiant, staring at the ground,

Releases a soft hiccup of laughter.

(At her age he had known,

Had had to bite down,

Had known himself naked,

Shedding one skin for another: flaked.)

She looks up, back at him;

No shadows skim her eyes,

No hint of withdrawal, or flinch,

She’s not yet his sintered mirror,

Her head tilted this way or that

Gives their unwarped images back.

He could teach her,

Flesh of his flesh, as yet unblooded;

Arraign her in the kangaroo court –

Held in camera –

Hopping from one foot

To another.

He’s felt the impulse,

Been baptised in the righteous,

Blinding fury – too strong a word,

Perhaps, but it’s beyond anger’s grip,

Something slipping loose,

Something reined in tight.

And she’d tidy her room,

And be quiet when told to.

And she’d still love him.

Isn’t that the beauty of it?
...


(An extract)