WORLD VOICES

MEANDERTHALS
  BY LUCY DOUGAN


Contents

Home
Introduction
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Wayside
Kenwood House
At Villa Bruno
Museum in the Park
The Forge
Municipal Pool, Sunday
The Past
The Shy Dog
Atavism I
Atavism II
Nettle Soup
Guillemots
Young Boy with Daffodils
At 10
Danny at Hathersage
A Letter from Spain
Thresholds
The Sleepout
Saint Catherine's,
      Abbotsbury

Small Family of
      Saltimbanques

Fritz
The Mice
A Mayfield Haunt
Notes Towards an
      Impromptu Garden

Female Pan

World Voices Home

The Literary Explorer
Writers on the Job
Books Forgotten
Thomas E. Kennedy
Walter Cummins
Web Del Sol



A Mayfield Haunt

for Amy Tribe

Stowaways, all of us,
in the faux boat
up at the block.
The day is becalmed,
a sunset is up over Kooragang.
You say with a perfect rightness
that this is Larkin's park.
Our black dog strays, a gangly lamb
in the unmown grass, and the old sisters
begin their evening stroll.

When did we find the stand
of white flowers? Those close-belled,
stems springing like incongruous brides
out of the fringe of untidy bush.
Their text-book lushness recalled
water-meadows, nymph eyes, seductions.

They stood sentry to grave
stories we never caught,
wrapped in the grass and sky,
the sound of the swings.
There were many visits,
beating paths to the tamed patch,
before we learnt of the child
who died playing on the building waste.
She lost her balance and they built
the playground in her memory—too late
to learn to walk the length of something then.

Others trailed up here on Sundays.
We didn't show them the lost girl.
When they came the white flowers hid.
It makes me think they did not fall
into the wild pocket of this place like us.
We pushed our children high,
their feet flying out above the knock-off
at the distant factory, and sat on benches
with the sad watery genius that presided.
At home time we armed ourselves with sticks
to fend off the magpie guardians,
wished for eyes in the backs of our heads.