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Jennifer Barraclough

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The Watch Cottage

I live in different houses now.
Bigger and busier, bought to serve an end -
Nearer to work, to roads, to friends.
They’re solid houses, stone-built, gardened, groomed,
Two of us knowing how to occupy each room.

This is a house I think I might have known.

I’m eight or nine. I go through fields alone.
I find the ruins of old cottages,
Grassed over, lost, a frame, a shape.
Sometimes there’s wallpaper, a grate,
Cupboards with rubble, dust.

At night my father works alone
In the small house that’s now a lumber store.
He takes a Tilley lamp. It hisses through the time
We’re there together, while he planes
Or handles seeds and plants.

I play upstairs, in a low room
That might have sheltered three or four or more.
They’re not here with me. This is no ghost-reviving exercise.
I’m by myself, with things that know their business,
Walls, floors, a certain kind of watchfulness.

It’s cold. The winter’s afternoon brings down the night.
Someone is coming in to speak to me, switch on the light.

Page(s) 48

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