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Mark Goodwin

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Hide and Find

I’ve left
the cottage keys, round the back, beneath
a lump of moss-softened tarmac at the base
of a hawthorn trunk, just to the right of the woodshed and
                                                                         dustbins. I tell

my mum this on the phone. I’m in a kiosk surrounded
by upland meadow, drystone walls, and moors and mountains beyond.
The old Ford Sierra parked nearby has my

baby-daughter, Tess, and her mother, Sarah, inside. I’ve left

the keys for my parents; they’ve rented
the place for a holiday but’ll arrive
late. I foresee
my mum’s or my dad’s hand lift the lump to reveal

silvery keys on soil. They’ll know
my hand placed them there. Expected surprise. Many times

I’ve found such secreted keys;

familiarity emitted from under stones, tucked in walls, put in
                                                                                        gutters
(not really that difficult for cunning thieves). On holidays
- keys my dad placed where words didn’t meet. A game

my dad’s passed on to me. And as I survey

this landscape, framed
through the drizzled-on window of this kiosk,

all those holiday cottages
in Cornwall, Wales, and the Lakes collude in my mind to surround
keys easily found
that could’ve been so easily
misplaced in a strange world. So what can I hide

for my daughter to find?

 

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