Telling the time the old way

His old half hunter
dictated the time
making a space for itself
parked by the marmalade,

Introducing the bitter-sweet
summer fruits sharpening
sugared cereals
-milk blushed by raspberries.

It would be years before
my father would wear
a wrist watch.

‘Till then breakfasts
were always at the mercy
of this scarred face
cracked the length
of its enamel.

Time rationed to the
top of the hour slowly filtered
into the morning traffic,
when towns seep out to work.

Then the ache poisoning
the pit of my stomach.
A classroom reeking
of stale learning;

Victoriana by rote
and loathing.

1963
(Looking Back)

Memories let their June days fall apart
and leave behind the rains which rushed
rivers into torrents. Its just the sun we see
and the turn of the landscapes into harvest-tide fields.

Forgotten the tears, like the sudden storms.
Looking back finds only days when everyone’s Dad
was a war hero and cloudless flew the skies
with stories of the Spitfire – the circling Cessna
becoming a Lysander flown dangerously far
behind enemy lines; while at ground level
Airfix figures re-fought desert conflicts
across the shadows of children playing in the sand.

The spell breaks. A voice from a future the past
didn’t foresee refocuses the daydream into
the eyes of a child now grown – a daughter
in young adulthood stands among her words
— who will look back too, on June days
as if no rains ever came to take them away.

Poet to poet

(To Elwyn Roberts, with thanks)

I observed
as you held my words
in a half nelson;
loose-leaf, limp bound,
the manuscript bent double
and folded back
across its spine,

And you read me aloud
frog marching my own
ideas past me,
and for the first time,
I understood what
the rumblings in my soul
sound like;
and the shape my thoughts
take in someone else’s mouth.

Then you put my feelings down
and picked up a sheaf of papers
— all yours; you gave me
a reading of what was
going on in inside your mind.

I heard every word,
looked up to the oak beams
that crossed, re-crossed the ceiling;
they listened intently as well.
Then as they creaked,
your home shifted slightly,
finding a more comfortable
posture in relation
to the wind outside.

You had read me
— and yourself —
before letting me go;
with good luck for a wish
on the shake of a hand …