Rhiwargor

[calico]

Wallpaper on wallpaper in the hallway,
in the house with rooms full of baskets,
crochet hooks and holes, moths,
pots of chalky zinc and pink
calamine lotion, from a holiday
somewhere hot,
in 1981.

Severn Trent trees smoked in the hearth,
warming water for freezing baths
and in winter nothing lit up the road,
no-one came through the fields.
The sky changed from grey to black,
the lake was long
and dark.

I think of this when I drink wine sometimes,
figures around the kitchen fire,
puppets in folk costume cooking
bananas in embers:
Viking Burial, we said.