Where were we again? Lostwithiel.
The dry-damp smell returns first:
Garden insinuating into the house
With decaying air, stirring growth.
The weight of rain pulling down the sky,
Flora in wan sunlight effervescing:
Synthesis of charcoal and wet bark,
Boiling water and cooking grease.
Domesticity. Creaking about
On buck-toothed floorboards.
Doo-dah, your Dalmatian, shedding
A scrim of fine albino hair, her smell
Dominating all others. Basket, blanket,
Biscuits. Shit. Mornings we breakfasted
Together, or else with your mother,
Sometimes your sister and her daughter,
Or some other waif or stray:
Your mother’s lover; the decorator.
Their faces all gone but I still see you
Weaving through the living room,
Short-haired and swishing, preparing
Simple meals, or a bowl of hash.
We drove through pasture
To Padstow, St Austell and St Ives.
Long walks by the Fowey stilled time
To a zero, a naught, a nothingness
Of pure leisure, a fallow period
Before serious purpose overtook us:
Work, study, adult responsibility,
A pressing distance closing in.
You took me to ‘the site’,
The abandoned holiday camp
Where you lived once
In a haze of Special Brew and smack.
Your pregnant friend,
Skin stretched tight across her face,
Drew hard on her cigarette,
Looked at me, and asked
If you were going straight.
We scored some hash, and left
Quickly. I noticed that
You didn’t answer her back.
Before long we began to wonder
What the fuck I was doing there.
We agreed to part and were reunited
In that final week above the lounge,
While your mother’s black and white TV
Flickered out its mournful coda.