Friday 31 March 2017

Memory Lane

Memory Lane

Blinkered and ear-muffed
You don’t want to register
The changes that progress
Has unleashed on your home town.

Half a century later
MacDonald’s and Sainsburys grazing
Where there were fields, oak lined,
Sheep bleating out lambs this time of year.

An Odeon Cinema has colonised the dog track
Where you gathered used betting stubs,
Slipped the track barrier and coursed
Like a hare from the hounds.

The convent bolted and shuttered.
The nuns transplanted to suburban
Housing estates. Mercy Nuns-
Not shamed, but old-

Unsustainable as a going concern.
Church pews still implacable.
More so now to creaking knees and neck too stiff
To crane after forbidden subject of desire

As you were once want.
None of your peers.
Did they migrate, like you,
To wider pastures?

Or aged beyond recall
Like you- a ghost of yourself
Looking for a bend in the road
That’s no longer there.


Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

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