What dog was Rodney?

What shreds of sleep stitched

dream to memory to make

my waking moments march

to melody un-thought for

fifty years? 

                       The BBC

and Light Programme and

Children’s Favourites and Uncle Mac and

Pocca-pick-a-lean-yah,

He played the con-suh-tee-nyah,

Pocca-pick-a-lean-yah,

From sun-knee It-tar-lee!

Less than a minute’s Ipad’s use and I

had found the title, singer and the date,

together with a link to ‘53 and

Decker singing what I thought I knew.

The music channelled thought

and stuck the present to the past.

Space, learning, life, experience – irrelevant:

a moment of unsettling now.

Abrupt: a sonic wormhole.

Giving and yet mocking;

emphasising what can’t be

matched up so easily.

Remembered words were wrong.

I had forgotten, if I ever knew,

the narrative: lost concertina

eventually restored with simian aid

to general delight. 

                       But tune and attitude

were part of me, a key

just waiting to be turned

inside a lock available to all.

First dog my parents had

I think I never knew.

‘Rodney,’ unlikely name belying

mongrel status that I think that he had.

His life is shadow now, beyond the click.

There’s no one left to ask.

No records to consult.

And does it matter?

Silly questions

never asked because

there’s always time.

But time is ever now,

as then denies the space

to hear what is not said.