Her arms, a bun warm span,
His bristles, prickling tweed,
A map of rolling deeps and flying peaks
White water rafting in a lace knit shawl.
Ogres peered at the twice owned pram.
In an unknown country, name unsaid,
Three mapped inside the bubble of my head.
In my yellowy daisy days
Tall grasses jungled my sunblind head,
Still ponds of tadpoles, boatmen skittering,
Dragonflies shimmied in silent skies.
Cattle gazed, and fields of quiet stood
By running waters and empty roads.
People shattered by war, each
Nursing deadly secrets of the past.
Our blank road and copse and council house
And mead were my mapped horizons.
In my green apple growing days
We raced schoolyard and road
Hop skipped the map to the Co op and back
Green smelly bussed to Chelmsford,
To the tight laced river, the rationed shops.
A pound of cheese, wrapped in brown paper and string,
By the man in a butcher's stripe apron and straw hat.
Worth a penny more to be served like a king.
Three great factories swallowed us all
Then belched us out on swarms of bikes
Squashed up like a swarm of flies.
I remember the lisping girl, smart kilt and ringlets
To and fro running from door to gate
Forbidden to open the gate
Forbidden to join the game.
Her mother inside, a suicide.
I remember her name even now
Fifty years gone. Where is she now?
Which map has she journeyed on?
In my red rollicking days
We turned somersaults on the metal bars
Twirling outside the pub,
Shook old man's beard from the school lane hedge,
Ran and ran, chest bursting and gasping,
Played tag and it and he and fleas,
Linked arms and sang marching songs
It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring.
In my blue and crying days
The world closed up like a wounded heart
The map turned back, the parchment twisted,
The roads led nowhere, three were drowning
Locked in a bubble of tears.
My clothes were navy, her eyes were blue,
His lips were blue, the hospital white.
The bomb would kills us, the food would run out,
The rent was not paid, no hope in sight.
Outside the bubble, the map went on,
To Boreham, to Braintree, to Walton, to Harwich.
Essex grew larger inside my head,
Essex the gateway to fantasy places
To London, to Spain, to holiday sun.
Prosperous Essex, ski holidays and ponies,
Hairdos and mini skirts, big cars and TVs,
Boyfriends and parents with holiday homes.
In my brown oh so boring days
Work was an office of those who had failed
To be fit to die with Essex courage.
Dim wit managers, nervous wreck managers,
Drink sodden pilots, Burma rail skeletons,
Sergeant Majors still bellowing,
TB victims, wide boys, good-time girls,
These filled up the office.
The crippled and broken were hid somewhere else.
The flower of the nation, all lost, all lost.
In my polka dot black and white Op Art days
It was Carnaby Street and Essex was empty.
The boom babies rock n rolled up to London
Filling the gaps of the lost generation.
We jived in the school room, mashed at the bus stop,
Locomotion was danced in factory tea-breaks.
Essex was empty. The airfields healed over.
At Rivenhall and Hornchurch the silence returned.
Skylarks sparkled their sharp melodies
Over a county of blond waving wheat,
Green ripples turning to flaxen oceans,
Barley bristles to rivers of silk,
Lanes crammed with dog rose, blackberry brambles,
Black sloes and elder, rose hip and haw hip,
Wild hop and crab apple,
Herbs that would kill you and herbs that would cure you,
Mushrooms and hazel nuts, chestnuts and peace.
In my lusciously lilac days
Love was my meat and drink
The car was a spaceship
We zoomed on the trunk roads
Fought lorries from Lyons and loaders from Amsterdam
Careered round the cones and growled at the road works.
Maps were printed in primary colours
Routes like neurons mapping out thoughts
Land was a rolling screen, landscapes and villages,
Full colour feature with stereo soundtrack.
Oh, how I miss
The mega star elms, fan topped perfection,
Unmistakeable urn shapes playing the lead,
Eons of giants crumbled and fell,
No angels to save them
They saw men as the ants under their leaf mould
But they ended as chair seats
Squashed by the backsides of more and more people.
Cure was impossible.
In my amber spiralling laughing days
I yearn to map Essex, the big flat land,
Turkey plump bodies laid out for roasting
Sleeping flat strands a mile out to sea,
Sand castles and moats, ice creams and gulls,
Pop music piers and candy floss kids,
I follow the path of the Celts who loved trees,
The Romans who took land, drained it, stole grain,
They brought with them every colour and faith,
Soldiers to settlers, more to the mix.
The Saxons who tilled, the Normans who counted,
The Dutch who built dykes and drained it again.
Beaches of shingle, grating and moaning,
North winds with waves of whale back grey,
Land just a strip on a huge sky horizon,
More sky than land, more sky than sea.
Ghosts on salt marshes, desolate smugglers,
Canada geese like a biblical plague,
Days spent combing the beaches for amber,
Flotsam from storms on the Baltic coast,
Red haired autumn flashing her sky blue eyes.
In my ersatz American shopping mall days
A rainbow of wealth is waiting to mug me,
While somebody's child shivers with cold
While somebody's son crouches in doorways
Somebody's daughter's a heroine tart.
The rolling somersault land goes
Twisting through hamlets with old pagan names,
Wide vaulting towns with canvas stripe markets,
Concrete yard farms with ramparts of straw,
Gravel pits snarling with dinosaur diggers
Or sleeping as lakes filled up with tears.
Inland cliffs of pure singing limestone,
Ancient deer woodlands leaping with myth,
Black Shuck patrolling with flames for eyes,
Bones of saints mouldering, left undisturbed.
Maps of Essex are written in sand and water,
Deeds and hedges and clods of clay,
In flesh and blood and memories,
Memories of yesterday.
December 2006