Childhood

Childhood 

I

I have etched in my mind

Pictures of that childhood time

Scenes and smells and sounds

Images fixed in memory

Burned deep by the New-Zealand sun

That light bright antipodean sun

In that first town 

Split top to bottom end

By hot tar road

Lined with dusty shingle verges and

Wooden tin roofed houses squatting 

Behind lawns of parched southern grass

In that first town the hospital on the hill

For women having babies

Sat above the statue with names and flowers

For men killed in Europe’s wars

In that first town the shops dotted along the road

Had rails to tie horses 

That were no longer ridden or lean bikes that were

And pubs one at either end of town

For ease of access for men 

And women of a certain sort

In that first town 

The old lady

In whose garden reminders of the never known northern land

Mixed with indigenous flora in cheerful jumbled profusion

Cabbage trees and cherry trees flax bushes and rose bushes

Toi toi plumes and prince of wales feathers

All tossed together in happy confusion

And out the back thronged 

Apple trees and plum trees

Strawberries and gooseberries 

And other fruits

Enough to make you sick with the gorging

Up the hill 

Flocked hens and ducks and geese

In whose defence the old lady waged constant war against ferrets

Her house reached by small legs

Unable to keep up with the urgency of getting there

And in that rush 

Ends of toes torn off on sharp metal roads

To be cleaned and bandaged by hands

Not diverted by other children and demands

In her house

Drawers of sweets and tins of home made cakes

And other spoiling treats

And tea to drink with sugar

In her house my presence 

Overseen by sepia people in picture frames

Whose relatives and friends lay in albums 

Carefully stacked in cupboards

Full of other old and amusing things I didn’t have to share

Her house stuffed full of large dark furniture

Not allowed to see the southern oh so brilliant sun

Rocking chairs and bedrooms 

Morris chairs and front rooms

Cool dim inside rooms 

Orderly and calm

Everything in its place

Including me

II.

At our house in that first town 

We had measles

And a fence to stop little legs from absconding

Up the long road to her house

A garden gate to peer over

A garden rake to trip over and spear one small runaway’s leg

A water tank to climb on and peer into

Mimicking adult concern about the level of the water

Always too low

A concrete roller in the paddock out back 

To make a seesaw on and fall off and crack

The five year old head

At our house in that first town

All us kids slept in one room

And I don't remember how we fitted in

At our house in that first town

One bonfire night

Someone in a guy fawkes mask

Peered in the window

And became in the searing heat of childish terror

A nightmare that lives with me still in a fear of faces at windows

Our house measured by the distance to her house

Our house

Lined up in the identification parade 

Of state houses

Faceless little asbestos boxes

Passed by

Twice a day blue buses

Delivering milk and news buses

Carrying outside views buses

III

In that other town

That flat jumbled round town

That no place to run to town

Life was bound up by school

And by those who inhabited schools

Adults who terrified

Whose narrow gutting actions marked tender places

As permanently as the tattooer's needles marks skin

I remember all those who tattooed us

Slowly pain-staking out the child

Their needles tap tap tapping

I remember those who etched

Their disciplinary patterns with acid tongue

And those who carved their mark

With calculated exclusion

But we did not choose to be inscribed

Nor did we have comfort of triumph over pain

Just bewildered fear and urge to be good again

I remember the times of humiliation when adults 

Sharpened their dull wits on young hearts

Forgot their youth and pinned the loss on us

I remember hating

Not them but me

For being so unworthy

Self loathing cuts deep

And leaves important places 

Deeply scarred and weak

I remember

And the remembering is cold and dry and bleak