Small fingers flutter goodbyes

smiles

shiny shoes

– first important days

in a photograph, held in my mother’s hand.

Square sandwiches in lunchwrap – with crusts,

maroon and white checks

plaits and ribbons

– all important I’m told.

Memories are lifted with trepidaceous reverence

by the frailty of time

from the shoebox filled with advertisements of my childhood –

reflections of a life seen through eyes which look like my own

although I don’t recall

the brushing out of tangled dreams into patterned braids

woven from chestnut strands with auburn flints

attenuated by black and white images.

I glance to the frames on our walls –

a montage of our own children

with their smiles

and scooters with whiskered wheels which crumple over gravel,

and smeared on elbows, trails of grey skid tracks

transferred on to lips by kisses.

Hats and fishing rods and tangled nests of line

hugging wading ankles

which disappear into the unexpected laughter of the sea,

subsiding

leaving clothes adhering

like the amniotic sack on a newborn calf,

shivering comforted – cocooned in a soft towel.

Chocolate cake mixture licked

and smeared on fingers and faces –

ceremonial markings of triumph over

the challenge for the beaters.

Puddle pools – bare fleshed freedom

hosed with the strobe of splashes drawing butterflies in the sky

and there

momentarily paralysing breath and time –

feet in shiny shoes.