Love You, World

Apple Green

The smell hits you as you climb the unsteady ladder
Into the house-wide loft. It’s solid,
Nothing like the smell when they hanged in the orchard.
Much stronger. Not the rot-smell of fallen fruit,
Wasp-drilled as if to be screwed back
Onto the tree. No, these green globes have been dressed
Each in its own square suit of torn paper
And laid in its place on the planks
Stretching between the roof-tile battens
On either side. The smell has a colour,
Apple green, which deepens with the early frosts
Until most of the fruit have been chosen,
Transported in round wicker baskets to the kitchen,
And cored and cooked in sauces and pies for Christmas.



The Kitchen Range

Set into the wall, and forbidden
For safety, but still the centre
Of life for the family, whose chairs,
Each jealously allocated,
Are gathered round it
After meals. “Five minutes for the Queen.”
Aside, the scuttle from which Mother throws,
And Father places, reflective coal
On the dull embers behind sooty bars.
The baking oven’s heavy iron door
Is never opened. Bread is bought
And Grandma slices it
In wafers, and then spreads
The raspberry jam, boiled there
In a copper cauldron,
Stood there on the hob to cool,
Bottled on the table unchenilled
For the purpose,
Spills rubbed into the carpet
Where I play.



Early Lesson

I sat at the end on the left,
Looked at by the big boy at the end of the table.
I was small, the smallest,
From whom nothing was expected but silence and a clean plate
Whatever was served that day.
So I learned to eat everything –
Grey mutton, thin gravy, lumpy mash,
Boiled and boiled and boiled cabbage –
And it served me well.
When abroad in different cultures,
When offered hospitality by non-culinary friends,
In cheap cafes, presumptuous banquets,
I always manage to present
A clean plate.



Coin

If I were a coin
I’d be tempted to be a penny.
Not a modern one, insignificant
In size and colour.
One from my boyhood, an inch across
That, when you had a few,
You could clink them together in your pocket
To show you were rich,
Or at least had enough for a ’phone call.

No, not even one of those.
Rather, something silver.
A Half-a-Crown, like those a barely-known rich uncle
Left on his occasional visits?
Untold wealth! “Put it in your money box.”
“Yes, Ma.” – reluctantly.

No, that’s too big and flashy.
What I’d like to be is a Silver Joey.
Not worth a lot, but enough
For an ice cream in those days.
A bit of pleasure for a tiny gleam.



Across Vauxhall Bridge

Red Routemasters clustered in Camberwell Green
When we were young. Perhaps they still do,
But not as they were then
With an open rear platform for boarding
As they pulled away, and for leaving them
Between stops when the traffic delayed us
So that it was worth dropping off and dodging the cars,
Ignoring the “Oi!” from the Cheeky Clippy
Who’d seen us in the mirror at the bend in the stairs.

We went everywhere in those buses.
Few mates had cars, or were going
Where we wanted to go – Peckham Rye, New Cross or Dulwich,
Up the Palace or Catford Dog Track,
That pub stuck out over the river at Deptford
Or bounced on the humpbacked canal bridge
On the Old Kent Road, going up West.
We was the boys from Sauf o’ the River.
No taxis came here, and we couldn’t
Have afforded them if they had.
For us, it was always the Routemasters
Out of Camberwell Green.



Sporting Preference

Tennis in the park on a hot Wednesday.
Should be cricket, but none of us like that.
Delicate negotiations with the second Games master.
“Tell no one, and I’ll overlook your absence.
Bring me tomorrow the ticket for hiring the court.”
We probably sweated far more than third man or square leg
And had nothing to compare with George’s brother’s
Daisy chain from the long-on boundary.
A musician, a poet, a physicist and a linguist.
Creative types. Not the most popular.
I wonder what they got up to?
Where are they now?



At The Fold In The Map

One way, we cycled into the hard East wind
But over flat roads, giddy
Along embankments above fen drains,
Fearful of falling in.
The other way, the road went up and down
On the low, steep ironstone hills.
We got as tired on the one as the other,
Turning into the outgoing wind
To rest on the journey home.



Somelier

“What shall we drink with this, everybody?
I think a burgundy with the beef,
And an Alsace with the fish before.
Have you got that, boy?”

“Yes, of course I want to taste it.
Of course we’ll need a bucket.
Oh, it’s already too warm to have a taste.
Take it back. No, we won’t wait.
Bring us another bottle.
You can leave that one until it cools down.”

“Uncork the Burgundy now, so it can breathe.
What? This is frozen. Get another.
Room temperature, boy. Where on earth do you keep it?”

But the chef put it in the bain-marie for me
And the old man never guessed.



Almost

Oh, the temptation! She sat low in the water.
Leaking? Sprung planks? No varnish
Where sun and salt had burned her paintwork.
White topsides blistered, needed scrubbing down to wood,
But long slim spars and mast speaking
Of power under a new suit of sails,
And brand new cordage throughout.
A snip of a price! “But likely to cost a fortune
To refurbish. And then there’s a mooring.
And how often would you get down here?
For how long? You never have time to take a weekend off.
What if you got stuck by the tides,
Or no wind, or a sandbank?”
So he didn’t buy the boat. But, oh, the temptation!



Broken Isolation

Clamour can be so demanding
When one longs for peace
Without additional involvements.

No sight of the way forward.
Nothing to be done.
It must sort itself out.

Despair.

And then you message me, send photos,
Cats, goslings, dawn, hills, books.

Immediately I am cheered.
I smile without intention.
You are here in absence.

This is why you exist
And you are hugely treasured in my world.