Not There

I had
So little time
To look for missing things,
Small things mislaid, as long-lost
As the faded memories
I have of them.

I had
In the back
Of my mind, a list
As frayed at the edges
As the torn-up thoughts
I keep of them
Now.

I had
A purple knitted scarf
With loops through which
To thread the ends.

I had
Three toy spacemen,
Dense and rubberised,
Silver, brown and grey:
Dan Dare daredevils
For my spaceship
Of dreams.

There was
A stone-made shed
And a red admiral dying
Or dead in the ragged
Cobweb window.

And the granite stair
To my childhood home;
The top step where I sat;
The sky from those days,
Still here, so little changed
From when the clouds
Blew through so fast
I felt the world itself
Was moving
Under me.

I have
Searched
For them all
Hard and long:
And found
No trace.

I have
Spent my hours
With these fugitives
In half-remembered flight,
Possessed by the lack
Of what I once
Thought
I had.

© BH 2015

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A few days ago, Karine Polwart posted on Facebook the other day. A question about the lost things people still miss. It set me thinking and this emerged. Missing things and the space they leave (or the space their absence comes to occupy) is something I return to now and again. 

A bit like Elbow’s ‘beautiful hole in my heart’ from My Very Best (Leaders of the Free World).

So here’s some little childhood holes of mine.