She had a closet full of shoes she wouldn’t throw away, reminders of the comfy days when every shoe would fit. For me, it was a treasure trove of giant shoes for a four-year-old to slide across the lino, Ginger to my grandfather’s Astaire. I was completely unaware of the agony of her size three […]
Category: Poems about Childhood and Youth
Sugar Rush of Imagination
In foolish figments, the wild willowwacks of child- hood, I am myrmidon to my master chocolate. My stash is hidden in entangled tree trunks; knots and holes encircle glints of wrapper and my dark greed, the eccentric need for sugar that makes me jump when Mother discovers crumbs and smears on the bedclothes. Kim M. […]
Midsummer Verges
Content in our garden’s leafy shade, I think back to weedy margins on a distant council estate, full of dandelions and significance, between pan-hot pavement and simmering black tar, a strip of withered grass, litter-strewn and dotted with dog mess, where bike wheels used to spin, click, tick; children clutched coins in sweaty hands at […]
Guitar Sunsets
My passion as a teenager was playing the guitar, contorting fingers into chords and positions, resonating waltz and polka from the sound hole of a Yamaha, plucking delicate arrangements of Bach and Scarlatti. Now my fingers will not stretch across neck and frets, too stiff and sore to press on strings, too clumsy for harmonics […]
Granddad’s Garden
Confined to house and wireworks walls, he was a caged animal picking tiny nuggets of copper from boot soles like thorns from paws. Every week day, at one for dinner and at five for tea, deep in the fabric of his work clothes and his very being, he carried home the metallic tang of blood […]
This Little Piggy
A little girl holds on to a chair, teetering in her mother’s shoes, shiny leather stilettos, her feet squashed down into the toes. Granny smiles, forgets for a moment the bunions on her aching feet, the pain when walking down the street, the raw skin and unbearable heat. After bath time, with pyjamas on, they […]
Que Sera
I wanted to grow up like Doris Day just walking in the rain with Johnny Ray – whatever will be will be. My dad was the great pretender and, for me, there was only you, Mum, singing to Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole, loving me as though there were no tomorrow. Granddad had the mellow […]
