Peter Phillips
Regent's Park
After forty years the boating pond is smaller.
Here I tried to drown my fear,
a boulder in my chest
as I circled to escape Victoria Station,
the train journey to boarding school;
a last holiday treat from Mother.
Now Mother's treat is the rose garden.
Her face likes the stroke of the scented breeze.
She shuffles to the ducks, licks an ice cream,
on holiday from herself,
escapes from sitting inside her head.
Nearby a swan treads water, searches
for her young, splashes down;
they ride the surf to her wing.
This poem is from a sequence entitled Looking For You
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