Revision -
some of your suggestions taken on board (thanks) , but where are we now?


Mr Ford

Mr Ford's spectre paced his basement room.
His window opened on a hollow green
below his garden of collected trees,
his cases empty of his calf-bound books,
his fireplace rarely brought to life with flame.
That's who he was: VIctorian, gardener,
cleric, and father (I think it was of ten).
He claimed peace to study there and then,
the spacious chamber entered from the kitchen
by stone steps. The room was used in our day
only on Wednesdays by the Brownies.

A post-Victorian, heavy billiard table
slunk to one side, unused (there was a cue).
The boarded floor was dry, the rug threadbare.
We sometimes put ice-cream blocks on a stair
to keep them cool. The sweet green smell
of apples on the ledges, and a wine rack,
cobwebby, unused. A locked old door
led to a room with a frightful secret
we couldn't ask about, were stone-walled
if we tried. A flicker of silence
was seen in our parents' eyes.

In old houses, unknown secrets sleep.
To live above them, can we waken them?
Did Mr Ford, who kept this library
beside a dungeon, hidden from his children
by stairs and keys, conceal hard facts from them
in kindly wisdom or hypocrisy,
in sympathy, guilt or conspiracy,
or could he summon no words, did he think
the cold and fear that lingered  and produced
a young girl's shadow, should be warmed by fire,
shelved and planted with a garden?

Sally Evans