Armada

of a house that no longer exists,

I sat like a cabin boy who listens in secret

to the crew of a great, creaking ship,

and eavesdropped on the adults below me.

A dial searched through the static

of radio wavelengths. Band music.

A fug of voices. Light. Comfort.

Soporific sounds cotton-wrapped the heart

and sent me, a little spy, sleepwards.

I do not know what happened while I slept,

Nor how long I slept. I cannot say.

But waking, I peered down into darkness.

No voices. Silence. In a blink it seemed

Familiar objects had become antiquated.

Whatever secrets I had hoped to uncover

were never uncovered, and now

are covered by gravestones or burnt to ashes.

I cannot blame that child his lack of attention.

He would have understood their secrets

no more than I can understand why, once again,

I attempt to eavesdrop on them,

and move down, stair by stair, towards them.

Echoes (#ulink_d2507180-c911-50cd-995c-bb24af7338be)

With arthritic hands and red-varnished nails

She drags herself up the wooden stairs,

The frightening heartbeat of the house

Is made by her iron callipers.

The bomb-crushed legs, the bolted bones,

The hands that scrape like talons on the stairs,

The damned-up pain, the hate, the grief;

The soul crushed by iron callipers.

Beneath grey government-issue blankets I

Lie in a makeshift bed, feigning sleep.

Five years old. I hear her weep

As she drags herself up the wooden stairs.

Like a ball and chain her iron callipers.

She rejects all help, all love as I

In later years will learn to do.

Five years old. I cower from her authority.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

The sound echoes through my history,

And imprisons me.

Neighbourhood Watch (#ulink_c88e1e0e-716f-55f3-b62a-ce79e90f1e1d)

This Street has grown stale.

The house in which the old Jamaican lived

has given up the will to dance.

The young lawyer and his lovely wife

have dug up his garden. Gone now

the remnants of his failed experiments –

the exotic blooms that never quite happened,