Getting ready for school:

Beware harsh green hall carpet concealing large spiders

The phone on its throne by its telephone chair

A confessional box for wind-ups and hopes

And occasional penny-watching long distances

In the labyrinth basement

in a dark lake of  green carpet.

 

It’s January- mild or cold-

My school uniform on for school

My battledress for dread and bafflement,

Each day a new strategy flies and fails.

The phone rings, my mother talks in screams

We hang on the stairs listening.

 

Deidre (the lodger) and me

Re-order her strangled words into sense,

Think something must have happened to the dog,

Whose great yellow ears would flow behind him like comical banners

Whenever my brother drove his open top sports car too fast,

Like a yellow flicker over a disappearing stripe of racing green.

 

26th January 2016