Elizabeth Burns
The Return
For years you’ve held the memory of this place
delicately, like the shell of a bird’s egg
cupped in your hands: a place of childhood,
sometimes glimpsed in little snapshots,
black and white, or felt in the sudden jolt
of what you remember – fingers in soft black earth,
a warm greenhouse smell of the stalks of tomatoes,
the gap in the hedge that led to the heath,
the church with its steeple and blue-painted door;
and the sea, and the path that you took to it,
down through the sandy-floored pinewood,
and then to come out of the dark smell of resin
and enter the glitter and sparkle of waves.
You’re scared to revisit this harbour of memory,
scared of disturbing the silt – and yet here it is,
touched by your hands, and nothing is spoilt after all
when you visit the house by the heath,
when you see the waves sparkle, the way the light,
sheer from the south, falls and refracts on them –
and the memories are a brimful glass of water
that you’ve carried so carefully over the years
to find by a miracle none of it spilt.
delicately, like the shell of a bird’s egg
cupped in your hands: a place of childhood,
sometimes glimpsed in little snapshots,
black and white, or felt in the sudden jolt
of what you remember – fingers in soft black earth,
a warm greenhouse smell of the stalks of tomatoes,
the gap in the hedge that led to the heath,
the church with its steeple and blue-painted door;
and the sea, and the path that you took to it,
down through the sandy-floored pinewood,
and then to come out of the dark smell of resin
and enter the glitter and sparkle of waves.
You’re scared to revisit this harbour of memory,
scared of disturbing the silt – and yet here it is,
touched by your hands, and nothing is spoilt after all
when you visit the house by the heath,
when you see the waves sparkle, the way the light,
sheer from the south, falls and refracts on them –
and the memories are a brimful glass of water
that you’ve carried so carefully over the years
to find by a miracle none of it spilt.
Elizabeth Burns has published two collections of poetry –Ophelia (Polygon) and The Gift of Light (Diehard) – and a third is forthcoming.
Page(s) 77
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