
In my head I still make the journey
to your shed, to quiver at those
huge summer spiders and smell
the creosote and guano, to wonder
at your tools all cleaned and
oiled, a hanging display of your mind.
But now through this filthy
fissured window,
the late butter sun gleams low – and look
there she is, bent over,
with the tin bath I bathed in as a boy. And
there’s our washing to take in
copyright Francis Barker 2019