POEM TITLE
Returning
POEM
This was where the wood once stood.
Where lives met quickly on the crag,
Ready for flying.
Instead, we jumped, arms swung back
For a graceless landing. Some of us didn’t make it,
Breaking legs on rocks or coming home wet from burn mud.
All of us better off from it, our fathers would say,
Character building.
This spring I did not jump at all.
Stood quietly. Heart rushing at the thought of
Falling, still falling somehow.
When the last tree fell, the one we carved our names in,
it felt like the council had chopped down
the world.
All of us: adults, graduated, celebrating various degrees of success,
found ourselves rootless.
But then our mothers called to tell us
Of the old Lobster Pot reopening,
And won't we come up for Sunday lunch?
That returns us,
back to the place we swore we had outgrown:
Blackness on sea,
its castle we once dreamed to rule,
the North sea's bite, the seal cries.
We take comfort in what doesn't change,
Like our grandfathers
We count our ailments, drink our ale.
Comments