December 6th, 2020Local Lines
Small world
We look at the world once, in childhood
The rest is memory
– Louise Gluck
Primary school seemed so HUGE then. How can you be sure anything is EVER its real size?
– David Mitchell
Bailed up by the quick-fire barks
of a black and white dog
bursting towards me
bouncing with hostility
I struggle to clamber up the back doorstep
– the only available refuge
so high
Its up-ness all that matters
Panning back
inside this memory frame
the unpaved yard appears
– the chooks somewhere near
the concrete step
dwarfing the boy
unable to reach
the door knob
even if standing were possible
At the time no frame
just present tense
Stuff just happens
to you and around you
when you are small
The dog episode
just retrievable enough
to form a slim anecdote
and a lifetime’s phobia
- Bill Wootton
- Louise Gluck won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. Bill lives in Hepburn Springs where dogs don’t run free.
Local Lines are mostly written by a group of local poets but if you would like a poem considered for publication, contact Bill Wootton – cottlesbreedge@gmail.com
