Let's just say that when
you remember a pike,
floating in a river in
Sible Headingham, and
Trevor passes you the binoculars, age ten,
so you see it through polarised lenses,
that everything happens again.
The pike that presently still
stays still with twitches that
respond to eddies and flow.
Let's just say that when
Trevor, your father, reads from his hardback copy of Tarka the Otter.
As with Tarka, the otter, the pike
is still in the river.
Let's just say that your grandparents
are forgetting. That whilst that sandwich,
(electric bread slicer, cheese, tomato, white pepper, onion)
is still on your breath, and that in the
scrape of your spoon on the glass
ice cream bowl, you are present. Yet,
14 years is a long time and your
grandparents are forgetting.
And you don’t know Lou
has a white dog called Snowy who,
though stuffed, is always jumping.