Lucerne Street Notebook

I’ve been remembering the village I grew up in on the North Downs of Kent, walking up the road, re-visiting each house that I pass. I’ve used the old spelling of the village, which changed while I was in my teens to Lewson …

LUCERNE STREET NOTEBOOK

weedy triangle at the t-junction               
by Baker’s washerwoman home

then the house that Jack built of
post-war red brick with apple trees

next-door post-office butter pins
seeds flour gossip candy stamps

past teacher’s semi-detached
to Reg’s Saturday well-dug potato patch

opposite my two Neaves girl friends
their dying mother nursed by Nye

roses along the fence I ran into
learning to ride Mother’s bike

driveway    periwinkle    green gate                
hedge   before turn to World’s End

and back to cherry orchard fruit
picked among wet grass and   mushrooms

down past rain-shadowed sheep
to old country Plough the pub

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A Bedroom of Searchlights’: poetry. This collection draws a picture of the poet’s divorced mother, an artist with two children, who struggled with poverty, war, and the realities of daily life, yet still found beauty and comfort in her garden, and her art. From Inanna Publications, 2016.