The Visit

These tracks I’m riding now –

with every unsprung jolt familiar –

narrow to a distant pinpoint:

I go to seek

your never-reached remembering.

 

Sycamores line the station path.

On upstretched arms, their bare fingers

clutch at murmuration:

the skywriting of speckled black

on grey parchment.

 

Heavy with veneer, a bow-fronted chest

meets me inside.

Too large for the tiny hall it stands in,

too old a friend to be let go.

I rummage through its drawers.

 

Grey images on soft black paper:

from an album’s weighty pages

sepia thumbnails spill.

Fixed neatly once by gummed corners,

age has loosened them.

 

On their backs sporadic clues, faint

in pencil code;

its index though has long ago been lost.

I ask about the names and dates

you only sometimes know.

 

In drab gymslips, a school team holds

their year-marked ball.

Your in-charge smile sports modest confidence -

it's the season before you wed.

Plenty to stir our talk.

 

But times become misplaced,

a frown forms on your face.

Answers turn to questions.

For with each treasure brought to mind

another vanishes from view.

 

 

xi. 2017 – iii.2023