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Mary Ann Perkins

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Heroes and Doves

It’s a curse – my disobliging memory.
Don’t ask me the way to the A38; I may take
that route to Brum a dozen times and not remember,
’though I can tell you exactly where the lime trees
begin and end.

When you ask me the title of a book
which made me look at life with a new perspective,
don’t expect me to know, although I turned
the final page only an hour ago. And yet
I’m changed for good.

I’ve forgotten the name of the tune a brass band played
that day in July. I can call to mind the girl who played
the tuba, almost drowned in an out-size uniform; the wind
lifting the medals on an old man’s chest, and the pout of a fish
in a greenish lake;

but somehow the park’s location clean escapes me,
along with the Latin name of that plant you admired
so much. I recall a pod of children rolling down a slope,
reviving hope that phones and screens were second-best
on a sunny day;

but when you spoke, I was focused on three white birds
chased by a stumbling toddler in a matching dress. What can I say?
I’ve no facility in which to store life’s useful facts and figures.
They clutter the brain too easily with stuff I can’t afford to keep,
needing space for heroes and doves.

Page(s) 23

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