Showing Me

Wait for it, you’ll hear the old boy really yell!

My dad hurled a stone over our back-yard wall,

chuckling as it hit the shed’s corrugated roof

and we shared the shiver of rust down old Joe’s neck:

old Joe from the back, fat on scrap in the war,

still fat in leaner times, had an aging lorry

that sagged and wobbled down the alley,

gouging walls with great elongated grooves.

Fifty years on, I’m googling in on the map,

seeing an uncompromising patch of green -

the alley, the scrap-yard, the old houses, gone:

all demolished, like the site of a heinous crime -

compelling this need to preserve what I was shown,

if only like rust taking on the corrosion of time.

.

Reviews

[Tate Morgan]

Gerald I am Tate nice to meet you. I like this I like the way memories are queued from a sound or a smell.

[Gerald Parker]

Many thanks for your comment. I'm pleased you like it.