Cookery lesson, first week.

 The shell bumps against the sides
 of the egg pan, its beat the drone
 of a bee trapped behind a window.

 Freckles dance with bubbles, the egg’s
 sharp end rotates, slow as a planet.
 Flames wrap the pan in psychedelic colours. 

 On the bench pink sand (you wonder-
 is it from the Isle of Wight?) saunters
 through a pinprick. The top half’s

 still quite full. You’re holding a spoon  
 with holes in it. The teacher’s voice
 cracks you open - “Move girl!

 Nobody else stands and watches
 an egg boil !” You look round the class.
 It’s true – the other girls’ necks bend

 to buttering toast, displaying 
 Omo-white collars, name tabs
 neatly sewn. Somebody giggles. 


 Dance of the Disappointed.

 Perhaps if you’d visited us, like we always
 thought you would, brought wreaths
 of recognition to this consecrated ground
 instead of broken gin bottles, perhaps then
 we’d have stayed put. After all
 we worked our fingers to the bone
 to buy these solid memorials
 to rest in peace

 but then
 your heartbeat music
 stirred our souls.
 Our angels with trumpets
 our zephyrs began to long
 for neon. The smell of foreign
 food, your wild laughter rose
 up Akenside Hill. We wanted	
 a piece of the action so we clambered 
 out, put on our glad rags
 and ran to join you, to add our voices
 to your revelries.

 Only to find 
 strange drinks called Multiple Orgasm
 jars of vegetable hearts fading
 in restaurant windows
 chalked boards insisting “Happy Hour”
 your drooping shoulders in gutters.

 We weren’t having the time of our lives
 so when All Saints’ Church struck three
 we linked elbows, staggered back up the steps,
 slept while poplar leaves sprinkled
 ambient music over our graves,
 dreamt of damp soil and stone.


 Meeting Myself Coming Back.

 Just my luck to meet some scruffy kid
 stamping towards me on the pavement cracks.
 All I want is directions, a way out
 of this tangle of Barratt Homes, grown up
 since I lived round here. She tells me

 to keep to the edge of the field (as if
 I would forget the Country Code), to aim
 for a stile between blackthorn hedges.
 All I can see are tiny rows of box shrubs
 lining clipped lawns, useless boundaries.

 First I recognise her dog, just like my Lassie
 dead for 30 years. Smooth-haired lurcher,
 black, a small white V on her chest,
 impatient to be off. I remember the tug 
 of that leather lead on my palm.

 Then I feel the pain of comb’s teeth dragged 
 through that matted hair, the agony of knots 
 pulled out. “Which way are you going?” 
 I ask, wanting to walk together now.
 “None of your business,” she replies.


 Vacuum flask on the beach.

 Red plastic cracked now,
 silver innards spilling bits of shell.

 Did it drift across the waves from France?
 No course charted, spied on 
 by seagulls, was it puzzled over by cross-channel 
 deck watchers? Pairing up for a time with some twine,
 submerged by swell, did it rise spluttering 
 upwards towards limitless sky?
 Rolling in on the cream of the waves, 
 then washed by sea suds onto soft sand?

 Or was it left here last summer, by a mother? 
 After she’d scrubbed squirming bodies with brisk towels,
 poured hot tomato soup through chattering teeth,
 did she follow their coffee brown shoulders
 up the loose dunes - one step forward, half a step back? 
 Weighed down by damp costumes,
 already scouring her mind for what to make for tea,
 did she forget to turn round and check
 that she’d left nothing behind?