Walking through puddles, rain

soaked ends of trouser legs

that had swum gingerly

across the River Rae bridge,

the once gentle stream of summer’s past,

exhausted, dried out and the deposit

from long since removed factories

whose smoke deposits covered

the roof of our school

in a choking fit that came out in sympathy

with the janitor, puffing away after thirty fags,

this once gentle stream that I played Pooh

sticks in and examined the wild

life of insects copulating, woodlouse

turned over and then feeling guilty,

righting it up and seeing it scamper

as if turned into an armadillo

or at the very least a Sherman tank

buffeting and repelling fire from

the inquisitive boys and screams

of girls as their 1970s starched skirts

caused static in the Birmingham air;

I walked on home, squelching,

drowned rat and head buried

in the sand of school,

I heard a car horn blow its welcome

next to me and ignored it through

rain dashed ears, filled with consequences,

fraught with taking the next step

and thoughts of football muddled with early

pre-pubescent thoughts of wanting

to kiss Paula and Marie.

 

The car, foreign I supposed, rare

on our road named after a battle

that meant nothing to me but was told

by well meaning hater of children to take pride

in exploits of the past,

I shrugged my shoulders when that man

opened his mouth, disgraceful and brow

beaten by a war he excelled in, a misery

in teacher form who took pleasure

in inflicting our futures,

all things are beneath us

he would quote whilst

shaking every boy to within an inch

of their lives, yet

this blue shining car stood out

in the grey of my childhood,

never giving a toss for cars,

my father’s motorbike a gleaming stallion

that snorted smoke and fogged up

his helmet, a treasure I wanted to own,

yet through the window I peered, “Get in!”

he smirked, a step up from the bike,

from the dragon on two always correct

and functional wheels and bellowing, echoing furnace

to a spitfire on four pumped up muscles,

Popeye like, Mark McManus temper,

and loved as only a father’s first car can be.

 

“Wouldn’t you like a car like this”,

he spoke with authority, speaking with care

as he rolled through

the same body of water that had now drowned

out the pavement of Cecil Road

and which I had waded through as dead fish

struck by the mood of lightning

and the shake of thunder

over Birmingham skies, floated past me

in procession, celebrating freedom.

It was a way to keep out of the rain

and didn’t have the rank taste of

number 45 bus, cigarette smoke

clogging the short air as much as the terrible

pungency of Cadbury’s, Brown Sauce

and righteous indignation

bestowed upon the kids of Selly Park

and Stirchley by those in tweed and

faux fox fur as they boomed,

“We fought a war for you…”,

Early youthful diplomacy ensued,

“Do you like it then Dad?” I questioned

and when the answer came gushing out

of his mouth, that the Skoda

would open up new avenues for the family,

I felt sad that the bus to town

was to be relegated, that the bike

would never be in my control

and that like the River Rae as it spilled out,

spreading its watery tentacles, searching,

probing, eating away at concrete and dead fish guts,

it would soon be gone, only the memory

of it would remain.

Ian D. Hall 2016