- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Poem
- Custom Article Title: 'Silverflash'
- Review Article: No
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
Not since I was four or five at most
and in the first of many striped tee-shirts
have I been this close to the flavour of safety.
I’m walking into town again, the child of hills.
You bought me fish and chips for lunch, my own
adult portion because I asked for it, in Evans’s
tiled restaurant, the Alhambra of takeaways.
Fine living robs the faculties of right judgment;
I turned, lost sight of you that afternoon in M&S.
Gone, and the unworn self at once puts on habits
of wandering. (‘Have you seen my ...?’)
They stood me on a counter. You appeared
and recognition bore away the riderless hoofbeats
of fear. Pride claimed me, later, when you praised
my instinct to be visible, which soon became
the need to be noticed – a confused stage,
a knowingness that wasn’t what you’d meant
at all! You were relieved to see I’d asked for help,
could be that lost and, knowing it, be found.
My deep-sea stripes helped you spot me,
their colours sliding past, today, in town,
the blue and brown and silverflash of cars
like keys to some fastness. High ground.
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