Locals must have heard us fetching up,
packed in our pug-nosed Bedford minibus –
its cylinders’ spluttered misfire
and gears grinding through their changeful accents –
migrants from the Midlands.
Flat vowels swallowed by greenfield fortune,
moving to see what we might become.
At three days short of ten years old,
rare treat to ride up front beside
my father flush with his big promotion.
Feet warm on the engine,
mother sandwiched in between squabbling
siblings, grubby and tired of mid-summer,
restless to see where we might become.
Slipping our moorings, the ferry
is roll-on-roll-off basket of promises,
deliveries and cheap day trips.
Her squat symmetry and shallow bottom,
my very own Dawn Treader.
Like hawsers thrown to bollards we make fast,
settling to see what we could become.
Up budget-stretching cul-de-sac, four-square
with own coal bunker and shrunken plum,
a white-walled floor plan forms our blueprint.
In that detachment – shaped by boundary
of crumbling cliffs, creeks and shores,
high downs, woods and hidden caves –
finding how it was we came to become.
viii. 2014 [ii. 2022]
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