Memory Lane
Blinkered
and ear-muffed
You don’t
want to register
The changes
that progress
Has unleashed
on your home town.
Half a
century later
MacDonald’s
and Sainsburys grazing
Where there
were fields, oak lined,
Sheep
bleating out lambs this time of year.
An Odeon
Cinema has colonised the dog track
Where you
gathered used betting stubs,
Slipped the
track barrier and coursed
Like a hare
from the hounds.
The convent
bolted and shuttered.
The nuns
transplanted to suburban
Housing
estates. Mercy Nuns-
Not shamed,
but old-
Unsustainable
as a going concern.
Church pews
still implacable.
More so now
to creaking knees and neck too stiff
To crane
after forbidden subject of desire
As you were
once want.
None of
your peers.
Did they
migrate, like you,
To wider
pastures?
Or aged beyond
recall
Like you- a
ghost of yourself
Looking for
a bend in the road
That’s no
longer there.
Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017
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