This poem, like so many recent poems is a result of an evening session in Barcelona with the Poetry Group.  As the leader of the group is going back to California for the winter she first thought of having 'Departure' as the theme, but that we deemed too depressing so we responded to its opposite.
          As I have recently had a fairly significant birthday, my mind was drawn, during the meditation part of the evening to thinking about the form that the Pensions people have sent me (26 pages long) which, in one section asks the applicant/claimant to list all the addresses at which he has lived!  Which, if nothing else gave me the opportunity to use a punning title!
          It was this systematic re-visiting that gave a focus to my thoughts and in the poem I drafted I linked form filling and the going back over a life.  It was almost like a variant on, "A History of the World in 100 Objects" re-written as "A History of SMR in X Addresses."  And that X is appropriate because I have only lived in about ten addresses in my life!  Which seems remarkable in some ways.
          It is not surprising that the address that stands out for me is that of my childhood home, the first house that I can remember clearly - though the elements that I brought back to mind in the poem came as something of a shock.
          I'm not sure, to be frank that the part about the May tree actually fits with what I thought that I was going to say, but I am prepared to give the ideas some time to settle down to see if they will make sense eventually.  I think that there are ideas of innocence and experience; belief and superstition, rejection and society somewhere in it all, but it will take me further time to discover what I think I might have said!
          As always any comments will be very gratefully received.

Returns

Form-filling . . . so prosaic.

But I’ve now reached the age where

Section 10 (and further space if needed)

must be filled with each and every

place in which I’ve lived.

And so I’ve packaged to and fro

with evidence from off-white

envelopes that capture

my first land-locked house –

an empty space in memory –

to Spain, and by the sea, today.

And, of them all,

the Cardiff house

in Dogfield Street, Cathays

(odd names) becomes the one

that claims most visits

from my mind.  Because

there was a time when

corner shops were where

they ought to be; and

counters were too high to

overlook;  and butter, loose,

was bought by weight

with cars, odd interruptions

on the empty streets.

And in the other corner

(looking back through

walls) the brick-beds fill

with marigolds; nasturtiums

play at senses with the sweet

repulsion of the May trees’

urgent scent. 

                       I once made up

a posy of the blossom and

was hurt by my small gift’s

rejection, and did not understand,

‘Not in the house!’

I gaze at distant views

where I still try

to find again, something,

I didn’t think, I’d ever lose.

But, my feet drag with

years, and I’m

always too slow

discovering, again

what I know

isn’t there.

With this topic members of the group were more eager to explain what they were thinking about, rather than share any poetic attempts, and the discussion about the raw material that came to the surface in this sort of exercise was very revealing.