Getting ready for a new year of writing

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.