Anonymous Lines

Downstairs any morning;
sunlight and smoke
in slow swirling clouds.
The cat wanders in,
cries and wanders out,
flopping down the step
toward shrill sparrow sounds.

An open passage door
through which I follow
into a past, or no time at all.
Gooseberries hairy in the mouth,
that sour shock at the crunch.
Raspberries sweet on the tongue;
peas plucked from the pod,

sitting between rows of green.
His shadow blots out the sun,
a tall silhouette, cap pushed back
as a match is struck.
I follow to runner beans
and strawberry rows,
where the cat rolls over and over.

He is distant now, never hurried,
where it all opens up,
when I cling to his leg
looking down on the dyke
where the moorhen struts.
Out onto prairie fields,
anonymous lines of roads

and pylons. A relentless horizon.

© copyright dfbarker 2012

*first published in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available for purchase at: http://liten.be//gHmf9

In this poem, I was trying to convey some of my childhood impressions of summer, my father, and his little piece of land in which he grew all our vegetables. The painting is a slightly digitally enhanced version of an original, showing a typical (although romanticised) summer scene in my neck of the woods – although there are very few woods!