The Memory Of Running Water.

 

Birmingham, damp, soaking wet

And I feel the

Rain

Teem and rinsing at

My every pore

But welcoming me back with open arms

In greeting to a prodigal son

As I leave the bright modern station

Of New Street.

The autumn darkness shields me

Like an roughly made cloak and I remain invisible

To all who once played like I

In the Costermonger’s basement. The sound of an air guitar

Straining at the leash as the crash of a new beat

Hit our 14 year old minds.

The rain hurries through life,

To meet its individual end and collect and run through drains

That live below the beast.

A city that has changed so much from the days of

Rummaging

Through boxes of 45 R.P.M.

Covered in brown paper making the excitement last

Of what your pound may have got you.

The market no longer the playground of youth,

Of hearing a song that would take your life in a new direction;

Of the shouts of trade.

The rain collects in my trilby as I make my way

Through

The

 Empty

 Space

In which the Slug and Lettuce once stood.

Under the shelter of memory I recall the times that I had sat

In the bar watching a game,

Any game,

That took my fancy but with a smile

At the thought of the Goats goals when I couldn’t make it

To Maine Road.

The rain that had collected on the fringe of my trilby sloshed forward and poured

Over the pavement, cascading at first but then

Dribbling endlessly

As if in mock salute to the thought

Of midfield Generals and to Adam

The fastest kid in our year and a hero to all.

The dark nights of November in a city I call

My original home but which I share now with Bicester

America, Cornwall, Canada and Liverpool.

The passion of youth, of pride in a family history

Of having grown up in the city that produced my

Ancestors.

Under the Bull Ring, under the Rotunda,

The image engrained in my child mind

Of what could have happened in ’74

If my dad had gone to town.

I make way across to the market

The rain is cold, Birmingham cold

No place ever felt as wet. The shiver though is not

The chill of the November evening adding to the dying days

Of the year, it is memory,

Of history as I pause for a moment and say a word to my great

Grandfather as hands are clasped together.

An exploding B.S.A.

What a way

To lose your life.

The howls of 70 years, howling, death

The loses on both sides captured in a memory of him

As they pulled him from the wreckage

Only to be identified by his wedding

 Ring.

The hands clasped are not my own but I thank for small mercies

None the less.

The bus never seems to want to come,

The rain now persistent, the sky dark dingy,

Despairing…

But a smile creeps over my face

As I think of stolen kisses by bus stops

Of conversations of football stickers

Of trading cards, mars bars, my father’s first car

Always in the Birmingham rain.

I have my home

 In

 Liverpool, I have my past in the alleyways, in the streets of Birmingham

I have the thought of football boots being cleaned

In cold, mind crippling frozen water

That my dad would break the ice to.

Of cigarette stains that permeated the ceiling of all the houses

In the street as they smoked to relieve the 70s.

The rain cleanses the skin,

The cold shower is enough to have

People

 Scurrying home

Out of the dark November night.

Ian D. Hall 2013