Knotty Ash Memory

Sitting on cold tile wrapped in a blanket
Watching the sun rise before it happens
Trams rattle by sparks jumping behind
The phone booth light is out again
An occasional lorry passes
Wafting up the smells from the bakery
Cats watch sparrows hop just out of reach
Dogs aren't up yet
Clouds gather hiding stars and
blocking the sun
The smell of salt tar comes with them

Reviews

[JohnL]

Kelly's Bakery - I knew it well - in fact, I knew the Kelly family well - they attended Calvary Baptist Church as did I. The trams? Yes! Old ones with the driver completely unprotected and upstairs an open cage back and front where in decent weather my frriends and I would sit to and from school (Liverpool Collegiate), Green Goddesses - much more luxurious, smooth enough to do your homework on. 10 Prescot, 10A (Knotty Ash, 10B Page Moss, 10C Long View and the 40 which went up Brookside Ave and Thomas Lane and passed Ken Dodd's House. I have booked seats for his show 15th August at New Brighton yesterday. I have also located your piece on 'Wales and Knotty Ash' flattening farthings on the tramlines - Ahhh - memories, and the farthing was indeed a spendable coin when I was a lad. Bennett's shop, which was also a Post Office at Dovecot shops sold a loaf for fourpence farthing - everyone else charged fourpence halfpenny. We used to call putting farthings on the line 'changing a wren into a blackbird' (In joke - you'll understand it!), and as for Knotty Ash Station, we travelled from there to Southport and Blackpool. Dr Beeching put a stop to all that. Well that's my trip down Memory Lane. Let it not detract from two fine poems which stand in their own right and would even without the personal connotations simply as poems about locations, activities and life history.

Kind regards,

Johm

[Gandré]

To me this means the perfect surrealistic moment, just like - all got frozen and you tell it in few lines and it has an impact and I feel it! I liked "Cats watch sparrows hop just out of reach /Dogs aren't up yet " ---this simplicity had here enormous quality. great.

[Narnie]

Knotty Ash? ha! I must admit when I saw the title I was expecting some spoof of Ken Dodd but your poem is full of senses; smell, touch, vision... it is like the opener for a black and white movie. Quite different for you to be *anticipating* in a poem rather than reflecting? I like it very much.

[J]

Ahhhhh ~ and tea, darlin' . . . did y'bring the tea? An this roof is tough on a bum. Share a corner of that blanket, will ye, even m'thoughts are blue.

Miss ye, luv.

[Rain]

Very vivid. I love poems that seep into my being. This piece is so visual, leaving me with a haunting feeling of solitude. Excellent. Rain..