How long since you were on the map for anything,

small hamlet off Dogpool Lane,

squeezed between Stirchley, Selly Oak

Edgbaston, Moseley, and the Bourneville dark,

it is hoped

that W.H Auden drifted and mused along

the once leafy roads as he conjured

a rhyme of two along the Pershore Road

or dreamt of ducks at the top

end of the old potato fields

where children would force the Rae

to go round a makeshift dam.

Chinese Burn in make shift

Playground and the illegally drunk

Stout at the pool table, twenty pence a ball

dropped white before the black, the Hurricane

lifting the trophy on our patch and now made

flat upon flat upon same shelled interior flat

and memories

of a place I call a home

in a forgotten club

by the ever weird sounds of the Zoo

at night

visited twice by force.

 

Ian D. Hall 2017