Laying Down Roots

Before I learned of the weight of existence

I knew the familiar creak of the back gate

swinging against our allotted time, watching

the to and fro of our simple rhythms.

I knew the smell of engineers' oil on my father's

overall as he slumped from his work into a kitchen

chair, and the way my mother hummed with the

kettle, as if quietly celebrating his return.

Our house was small and giving, allowing its voices

to reach my room, its warm, filtered assurances drifting

through the walls and resting gently on my chest,

slowly forming the bedrock on which I would stand.

Outside, on hot Summer days, we sowed ourselves

into the fertile soil with searching fingers and

carried it home under our broken nails and bloodied

knees, in search of a mother's reassurance.

We climbed the trees and perched on kerbs, tossing

snobs into the air on lazy afternoons, and all the while

becoming part of the very earth that we revelled in,

cloaked in dusty innocence and oblivious of danger.

It happened oh so slowly, with bruised egos and tears,

being carried home through watercolour weather as the

world laid more and more of its indelible marks on us,

binding us unmistakably to that time and place.

Sometimes I return to the street that grew me and it

seems so much smaller, but I realise it's not the street

that's changed, but me, I have grown taller because my

roots reached deep down into that nourishing fertile soil.

And way beneath the man I became, behind the face

that weathered the storms and the voice that shouted

into them, lies the boy whose roots were firmly anchored

to that constant place, a place of love and belonging.

Audio file: https://1drv.ms/f/c/4db44a4d6b88c854/IgC1s5JzXLJHT5hoD4ND5uvuAW8Lg_HfvZX...

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