Abbeyhill
I haven’t been anywhere, or done anything.
When I had falling dreams, I fell
out of some bright fairground ride
towards this corner of the grass beside the toolshed.
And there’s the wall with the honeysuckle gatepost
I was sitting next to
when I was called inside
to witness Armstrong’s one step
told I would read it someday
in the history books. Which came true:
and every time I see it there, it’s the pink and yellow
honeysuckle blossom I remember.
There’s more. Not all benign, but there’s no undoing it.
When the place is bought by nobody I know
when I can’t set foot there any longer
still it will be my childhood home.
I won’t see if the honeysuckle’s gone
or the wall demolished, and the toolshed
will always have that brown, badly-repaired door.
When I used to dream of falling
I would wake as soon as I touched the grass.
The last time, I remembered as I tumbled through the air
I would end at home. And when I woke, that was the dream
gone forever.
Copyright © Judith Taylor 2017
Judith Taylor comes from Perthshire and now lives and works in Aberdeen. Her first full-length collection, Not in nightingale country, will be published by Red Squirrel Press in autumn 2017.
The Open Mouse 