Friday 13 November 2015



REMEMBERED 

First prize Pennine Ink Poetry Competition 2015

We walked along sandy paths 
through dusty gorse, my brother and I
And slid down earthworks, looking over our shoulders
In case Gryme should choose today to return to his dyke.

When we saw the first black spots 
on the broad leaves, we knew 
that however many of the green veiny plates we cherished,
we couldn’t protect them 
from the black blemishes of autumn.
Summer fruit was always over too soon,
only my brother risking the tang of devil’s urine 
on October blackberries.

In winter, exhorted by our mother 
to keep to the tarmacked lanes, rather than flirt with mud,
we shied at witches’ knickers among the bare hawthorn hedges
unwilling to believe that they were only plastic bags 
that had danced too long in the wind.

Although we are old now, our mother long gone,
lanes and fields built upon 
and the dyke scarred by bike ruts and lager-can litter,
I sit at your side, brother and hold your hand
and to my touch 
it is the soft chubby hand of a child, spotted 
not by age 
but by blackberry juice.