My Granddad Tells a Story.

He tells us stories of hot sun and hop fields,
packed lunches and early mornings,
walking in the grey dawn to start picking.
His long days, the night-time spent
sleeping under hedgerows,
his cheek cooling on the dewy earth,
to start working when the dawn chorus
warbled in his ears, and the sunrise
stained the fields fiery.

Inside his house are parts
of an accumulated life,
a torn-up photograph
all scattered in bits. I wish
I could piece it together,
gluing the fragments with careful hands.

We are never allowed up the stairs.
I used to sit at the bottom, wondering
what he was hiding, while my brother
played with the woodlice
crawling along the skirting.

I am older now. I realise I’ve become an intruder
in a room full of grief,
an unwelcome burst of the present.
I see him in his chair,
watching his old TV.
He likes to sit silently.

At the end of his garden is a green shed,
choked by the ivy that curls in and out
of the cracked and dusty windows.
Only a gooseberry bush
stands carefully pruned,
planted by Nan in some past year.

He doesn’t wear his wedding ring anymore,
and for all his stories, his real secrets
wait behind his lips, dammed up
like a river that threatens to flood.