#389 - High Street

                                      

20. i.21

389

2.23

High Street

add to a book of mother

 

a finger in the harbour

we’d go there to check the paint smell

sun thrown to the frayed floor

 

scraggle bush

uphill, flower lit

park whichever way

 

the tall brick past

red then

it was sandstone shade

street ferry ended

hours of the while away

 

and Aunty Eve’s along a bit

where Alice and all those animals

awash but I forgot the tears

 

had not yet ever come into a book

saw though where they were

left on the page for later

all paws to the moment now

 

were read to

travelled

must have learned forgetting then

 

up from the carpet

play down to the park

and doggy-do

 

swing of the picnic

unblaze of blue

the stillnesses of summer so

little white triangles puff and go

shining as cloud now

who can you see?

it’s a map!

 

and the bridge glimpse

(various angles)

that Greenway building eyesore

and insult to the memory of  

 

kitbag brown and some digits

worn colours … beginning with letters

like a phone number

like a uniform rotted under the house

from the war before we were  

 

play poker in the smoke

and leave it beery with the march

I must have been essential…

something along the lines of

what it had all been for

 

High Street was one end of the world

built safe and trudge

if only you’d bought just after those subs

the midgets

 

but other way along and weary

because it was a way

splash piers of barnacle green

grime harbour

 

pinchgut just there for a story

and who was that mad bugger

got between ferry and pier?

every time

they had to fish him out

 

blare blue of looking up

a breeze still

mirror lap nearly

little back forth rocking

we shall call a bob?

 

and back up the hill of a bit

too little for bob a job

but can watch

 

paint was always the freshest thing

came over the salt

got a lungful

 

were swtiching the pictures around

it was a long way up to the ceiling

we were checking up, making sure  

 

wringers in those laundries

of time defunct

from the Depression

they’d have to go

but not today

like the falling fence

 

thongs!

and the long grass

cut foot doctor rush

of silly silly mum