Tuesday 31 May 2016

poetry 2016/61

Shoes and Ships and Ceiling Wax

Stippled ceiling artex
spoiled by amateur plastering
where the ceiling cracked over a fireplace
long removed but the chimney breast
still haunts a dust-enshrouded loft;
the corpse of a previous resident
weighing on the mind of the house.

She remembers her parent's house
where lofty ceilings
mocked her miniature frame;
where spiderwebs danced on draughts
from ill-fitting leaded windows,
inverted forests of dust and dead flies
so far from outstretched hands.

Double gazing shuts out the wind
and the sound of blackbirds
nestled in apple trees
and the dream of her father was just a dream
and the night bus to Benwell
plies too distant from Tyneside docks
to rescue her dead brother
lost in the cobwebs of dirt and misery,
and the glass bottled Tizer
lies broken on Whitley Bay pebbles.


*As a child, I'd never heard of sealing wax and thought the phrase something to do with the artex.


© Rachel Green 2016


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