We look at the world once, in childhood
The rest is memory
– Louise Gluck
Primary school seemed so HUGE then. How can you be sure anything is EVER
its real size?
– David Mitchell
Under attack -
get away get away
A barking
black and white dog
bursts forward open-mouthed
front paws ploughing at the ground
Struggle to clamber up the step
– the only available refuge
so high up
Dim possibility
of being bitten
but more
just want away
from abrupt
angry-sounding
quick-firing loudness
See the scene now
in a memory frame
Pan back -
there, the unpaved yard
the chooks somewhere near
the massive - concrete? - step
– the way up to the back door
from the back yard
Too short to reach
the door knob
even if standing up were possible
At the time no frame
just present tense –
bailed up by the bark
What size that step?
A vast plateau?
Its up-ness all that mattered
Stuff just happens
to you and around you
when you are small
The dog episode
just retrievable enough
to form a slim anecdote
and a lifetime's phobia
bw
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