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Dankton Lane

Trying not to spill

On the milky path

Stretchmarking the first field

That bellies up from the coastal plain.

Behind and beneath

Stumpy bungalows and rusting trees

Blacken against the bonfire sky.

A bus rattles around

Mickey Mouse Town,

Primary bright in the dusk.

I look back to where

The cliffs gleam like baby teeth

In the bay’s gum-red jaw.

Above me is the unchristened iron hill.

This is not the countryside,

Nagged by the A27’s colicky whine.

The fishing villages are long swamped

On their thin windy strip

By a scurvy lip

Of industrial flats and mock Tudor enterprise.

The sea beyond is sullen

In its lack of charm, it’s narrow prospects.

Even at this remove

I try to see the window where you were born.

It is something to know, there in that chalky molar

Pushing up through Brighton’s prickly roots,

Bloodied by a flecked sun.

Here, below, I see an angle of our own roof

Ina mossy swaddle of satellite orchards.

And your window, beacon bright

In this be-littered landscape,

Where you are a hinge in time.

A kissing gate in the stony allotment

Of a snagged life.

D E Woodhouse