Recollections

Everyone likes a nice easy birth…
but they got the forceps for me,
struggling to coax me out

Reluctant to enter the coldness,
I played dumb to every question -
it must have been pre-natal prescience.

I don’t want to regress
or find out why I hid
   inside was a warm place
now outside I put on a brave face

arriving in a place I’ll never see again,
I went home to a place I remember
   vaguely
                 recollections test memory

toddler antics
feats of naivety
climbing unwatched ladders
falling into welcoming holes

snapshots that can’t be,
naked push-ups on forgotten carpet
propped up in a purple pram

where is the clue of identity?

Its hidden, unfamiliar evidence,
confounding, yet the subject’s eyes
   twinkling, give the game away

The red-coated cupid is me,
waving a cheeky finger to the camera
seated in a once-favourite pedal-car…
driving my first car, my last car

holidays to places obscured by time
clothes I’d rather forget
(even wearing a tie!)
haircuts that bring a cringe,
the memories are general
though I know for certain that
being a policeman gave me an allergy

I remember names, construct fuzzy faces
recall long nights of hide and seeking
these memories have left me
wondering, too much uncertainty.
Now, I guess at being happy

Failing, always failing.
To recall is impossible,
there is nothing at all,
only multiplication tables
Dick and Jane, makeshift games
and to remember is a strain