Directions

You go through the wall:
the Remembering’s on your left,
widows’ dahlias, match-wood crosses –
then John William Robson gone slant, lost
in the pit disaster,
across from him the black yew
with rats in its roots,
a trembling of needles
for they’re gone too fast
to catch their faces:
keep to the path.
Here’s willow for a sailor’s concern,
knuckles tapping at his mossy anchor,
the scrubbed marble doorstep
with its jar of snowdrops for an infant
unnamed and dead two lifetimes over.
I walk here all weathers, in rhododendrons’
Popish purple, blackberries’ wet blue
that get picked at night, in secret.
Winter now, all stab-sticks in black ground,
I’ve nobody here. Years ago
it was all running feet,
unearthly calls, kids in their dens
singing on glue like foxes,
but still I came anyway.
For some it’s a shortcut.
I’ll see you again.