Memory Threshold
(On my grandfather’s birthday)
My father’s father
-whom I never knew-
saw first light in the year
that Hardy published
Far from the Madding Crowd.
He surveyed the damage
through Cabbage leaves,
watched birds & bees
illuminate their lives – like plates
inside an antique pillow book.
He and his sister – Mary,
unwanted offspring
of bug eyed immigrants,
clinging to a board clad hovel
in a damp Forbury garden.
Last night, he dreamed he saw
his mother running red lights,
drunk – screaming blue murder
at comings & goings – all hours
along the Devil’s Half-Acre.
This morning, he wakes
to Canterbury Bells & Lupins
throwing colours in his eyes;
like a gaudy postcard vista
from a Cantonese village.
©️ Orion Foote
Visions of Orion Poetry 