School Lane

Even as a boy I only knew
The yellow walled house on the lane to school
As hollow and ransacked. Named after a shoe
I thought - "Sandals House" - but it was
the feeling of sand that crept into my skin
From the broken toothed windows and corruption within.

The brambles' red teeth and spiked arms of cedar
Squatted in rooms walled by rubble and sky
Where Victorian hands had hung pink floral paper
And flung bright windows open for fresh paint to dry.

Behind in the back yard a black Ford Prefect
Lurked landlocked in the weed-garden that scratched at the stone
wind-spinning like a dog turned vicious by neglect.
And as time saw me taller in successions of shoes
So it shrank to its chassis, its skeletal frame
Blistered by oxygen, dissolved by rain.

Crossing the bridge high over the railway
I was startled by engines in the cacophonous smoke
And I might have been an angel white cloud all around me
Below me the black coal the fireman stoked.

I recall running home with a painting from class
Of mummy and daddy and ruled rays of sun
And a yellow house with tiles and glass
Pets in the garden, a car, round trees
A blue inch of sky like a roof (or floored heaven)
Stuffed in my satchel when I was seven.

The emptiest of places are those once decorated
with the colours of love, but no longer painted.

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