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Wendy French

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Return Ticket

The train steamed in for half an hour
before clanking back to Devil’s Bridge.
The last ride of the day so I ran, hot
against the tide and browsers
in end-of-day gift shops, the clock
losing tine against the past until I turned
the corner by the pier, to face terraced houses,
fronts peeled and blistered after years
of salt spray and the sun still beating down.

The gap rolled over years and even
with binoculars I can’t alter the focus,
- my Aunt who lived here.
We’d sit and look at the castle ruins,
the quiet or angry seas. I’m caught
remembering how as a tongue tied
adolescent I’d stand and watch
her walking stony beaches collecting
shells while I’d dream stories of her past,
captured by half-heard adult talk
and how I longed to ask,
What’s it like to give your child away?
Each day we’d walk the cliffs and I’d toss
back my breezy hair, concerned with my looks.

After many years and turning of the tides
it became my task to give her to the home.
Walking from the car with her bags,
before entering, she stopped to pause
at an outside world. All day she sits,
cradling a cornet shell, all day I find
myself searching for her
in warped paint, weather beaten
window boxes. Debris on the beach.

 

Page(s) 169-170

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