Journey through my father

It’s a strange time to fade away
Just as the yellow fists are pushing through

Memories, locked in the blood, are reviving
Just like you – your stubborness

You were never one for beauty
You chose a dull street in a red-brick town

The seasons there were merely endured
You trudged to the shops in your brown coat

You were the king of the masculine world
Of cold that locks the fingers. Stoical

Of cars that did not start, of rust, and shelves
Summer chases the winter ghosts

You will not see it. Your mind is gone
The dull houses, the dark canal, by the pub yard

I sit on a wall, with the sun on my back
Watching the daffodils break the soil

On and on

The fields of winter shimmering

Guide me to you now

The giant sun aligns my path

Like angels in the sky

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

I stand and watch Orion's belt

And drink a Barley Wine

The plants on the window sill

No longer seem divine

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

The fields of winter shimmering

Guide me to you now

The giant sun aligns my path

Like angels in the sky

And now that you have gone away

All that's left is Time

On and on and on and on an on

Hugglescote Baptist graveyard

NB: True story, my family, the Hatchetts, lived in this everyday village in the Leicestershire coalfield. My great great grandfather, William, died of typhoid in 1874, aged 35, as did his wife, Hannah. He was a bootmaker. One of his two sons, James was fostered to a bank manager and became a bank clerk.  Banking must have entered the family's bloodstream - his son, my grandfather, James Leslie, was manager of the Lloyds bank in Droitwich, where my dad grew up in the 1920s and ’30s. After the war, James also became - peal of trumpets - the Mayor of Droitwich – a small, round man with glassses. He was an Independent. My dad told me that he was a Freemason. When I discovered  Hugglescote, a village for the which the adjective “ordinary” could have been invented and its Baptist graveyard, with its uniform slate stones, I immediately felt a sense of community that my life has lacked and at home there. And it was  a frisson to discover that my ancestors were Baptists. Where am I from?Junction 22 of the M1!

This countryside says sorry for itself
Its terraces, aligned from pub to pub
Its mountains, untidy mounds of slag

The pit heads and the winding gear are gone
Leaving, merely, an ambiguous urban fringe
Lead grey, on a Midlands afternoon

My ancestors walked along these streets
Drank in these pubs; they wore their Sunday best
Succumbed to typhoid, coalfield maladies

The Baptist church was their Jerusalem
They hoped for a life beyond the mundane
Lived and died, unremarked by history

Newton Burgoland is where we pull in
At a coaching inn - a fire, warm food
Lads in blue shell-suits slouch at the bar

They eye, suspiciously, our city clothes
The strangers – like ploughboys in an old print

“'What are you doing here?” says the barmaid

I am from here; this is where I am from
My great great grandfather's memorial
Is a slab in Hugglescote graveyard

A hundred years ago, I would have been

An insider, patching up boots and shoes
Joking with the barmaid – one of them

Tall grey stones slanted by a winter sun
“I won't let go,” I say, lifting you up
You slip from my fingers, and drop back

Cold snap

The sky is full of rain
And roadworks are blocking our way
The snowmen are melting
It’s sad that they must disappear
But the snow must be got rid of
Like this winter's day

We peer through a hole smeared in the window
Mummy had to drive to work
And grandma got stuck in her house
The smudged sky is a mirror of my soul
My head is still spinning from last night
On my lap, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The return

The grass is a shining white sea

A perfect plane, perfect shadow, a clear light

That speaks of possibilities

The buses, as stiff as blood

Form a patient line by the winter common

There is still a frozenness about

Figures are awakening from a long sleep

As I pass by Peckham's parade

Of peppers and fish, the startling green of the library

The solid geometry of the wood yard

Disillusioned by freedom I am inured

To the slow, orderly return

To a life regulated by colour and light

A place of queues, where harmony is observed

Nature is indifferent, but not this world

Christmas: a sonnet

Kindness is spreading like a virus.
It passes quickly through the winter town.
In this season, me has become us
as if the world’s riches were running out.
There is chaos in the sales hall
in the perfume shop, a near riot.
Drawn like insects to the gaudy mall
in strange dances, we jostle and thrum
through the cells of the multi-coloured hive.
We slide, hum and collide, busily
clutching our packages, our love.
Are we asleep or more keenly alive?
It is a play in which we know our part.
A ritual of the altruistic heart.

Peckham Rye Common – a winter's night

The road is clogged with frozen hope
A red light blocks our path
Air touches us, ice-fingered
A bus is slewed across the hill

Sometimes, I want to explode
Stuck, like now,
In tightly-coiled anxiety
Impeded by others’ stubbornness

It is my life, not theirs
The road should be clear
No red light, no snow
No fear of what might be

I want to implode, in your arms
I want us to be wrapped in a ball
Like a long, slow swallow dive
Into a calm, emerald sea