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
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