1332

A snatch of

Fingal's cave

While I'm driving to the Post Office.

 A memory of

Proms heard

On the radio long before we married.

A fleeting warmth

On a damp morning.

Brian Hick January 2014

©copyright Sally Hick 24.1.25

 1185

Groombridge Place

I'd scanned the photographs

Deleted the dull or blurred

And those already lost to memory

But even then the ones I thought I'd keep

Did not beg for comment -

Even the casual lines

My mother used to write upon her snaps -

The endless views of summer flower beds

And country houses visited by us.

It isn't that I can't;

It's that the urge, the urgency,

The fire is not there;

And all the beauties of this summer's day

Are lost when thought, unfocussed, goes astray.

Brian Hick July 2012

©copyright Sally Hick 14.6.24

 12

I've never been so cold;

But that's not true.

Fifty years ago there was no heat

Except the kitchen fire

That my mum lit

Each morning

When I went out for a wash.

My bedroom window frosted every day.

Inside the glass and out,

The lino burnt my feet

If I missed the slip mat

Made of old nylons

By Mrs Bright upstairs;

And even this was mild

Given the dash across the yard

Round past the shed

To the outside loo

Where the wind whistled in the bottom

And out the top.

Cold?

You don't know you're born!

Brian Hick 2010

©coyright Sally Hick 25.11.22

 Lavender

Glanced from the window of my evening train

Near Sevenoaks, the lavender's in bloom

And suddenly I am a boy again

Dancing with Mrs Bunton to a tune

I now forget but pop in fifty-eight

When we were all on holiday in Devon.

The waft of lavender almost knocks me out

As, hardly reaching to her Edwardian bosom

My innocent boyhood reels from the sweet spray

Sprinkled on hankies from the pixie pair

Bought as a souvenir earlier that day

While on the tour to Ilfracombe and Beer.

          Sensuous memories; far beyond my ken,

          For I am older now than she was then.

Brian Hick 

©copyright Sally Hick 11.10.22