Those Kodak Days

My father had an old lorry when I was a child,
left over from the war, he bought it at an auction,
I remember my sister and I were so excited
by its noisy fumes, hard seats, we rolled
as the beast clattered down hills, crates
piled in the back, the smell making me feel sick,
while my father indoctrinated us with words
of 'never marry a farmer' which I intuited
as never marry full stop, like the choke
beneath the dashboard which roared
and the cranking handle, I couldn't move.
We slipped our way, that old lorry and I,
staring out of the window, watching Papa,
and being scolded for oily clothes.

Once he took me swimming, it must have
been at Christmas, I wore a cheap cracker ring,
I lost it in the pool, I was your water baby then
diving, convinced that if I wished hard enough
the weightlessness of me would grow fins
and tail, it never worked but how hard I tried.
I sat with water in my ears, missing such a ring.
My father, how he tried, I was a difficult child
more fae than fae, I drew pictures and sang,
a garden was a place for tales and adventures,
the farmyard barns a playground of hurt.

I remember when I turned the crank,
something sputtered, flared and died and falling
backwards I whopped myself on the forehead,
such a scolding was had and didn't stop
when we drove the family car into bins,
rode horses up the granite steps, in the kitchen
through the dining room and out the other side,
took Minnou for bicycle rides, as he barked
from his precarious stance, I had a bike with no brakes,
flying down the hill, I would make sudden stops,
flying into gateways and landing, always sure
that these bones of mine would last forever.

I can't recall what became of the lorry or
the slips down to the harbour, the swimming pool
long since gone and Minnou, somewhere barking
in a frenzy, he hated water and bit our toes
on the hot sand when we eventually returned.
My father now an old man, I saw in his eyes
the rings around his iris, like trees, each a mark,
I doubt he could handle a lorry that jerked and bucked,
and spewed oil, ground to a halt and vibrated
so hard. Is it my imagination, was the lorry grey
or was it because those were the days
when answers came in black and white
and kodak was a colour print,



Poetry by Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 523 times
Written on 2013-06-13 at 20:35

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countryfog
Childhood memories, in lesser hands, can often seem solipsistic to others, as though they happened then only because the writer was there, when really it wasn't we who acted so much as were acted upon. Your stories are intensely personal but not private,
uniquely yours but accessible, we enter into them as you now understand you did, and we experience them first in the details that are necessarily yours and then in the resonance that ripples out and into the remembrance of our own stories.
2013-06-14


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
Such wonderful pictures. Words create so much more than a camera can.lovely Elle, simply lovely

Joe
2013-06-14