Jan Hansen | + Follow Poet |
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Once In a Memory

Once in a memory
The boy played by the small stream running near the hospital
where his mother was a patient and time hung heavy this
afternoon in late September.
The boy picked five elongated leaves from a bush on each one
he put a pebble wanted to see if any leaf/boat survived 
the voyage to where the stream went underground.
One leaf made it and should come out where the seaport is.
Once the stream had run free and rapidly crossed the green
field where elderly horses grazed, after a life of pulling 
heavy carts, the lady who owned the land let the horses
be free; she had spent her youth looking after her father
who had been a Danish general, keeping his boots shining?
Habits are difficult to erase sometimes, a horse was seen 
trotting in the cobbled streets lost in the past.
The stream ran to the strand where men pulled the boats
up for repair and selling fresh fish, crabs and shrimps.
As for the horses, when they were so old their teeth, gone could 
not eat, the last walk was the knacker’s yard; salami and glue.
The field is now a town square where farmers sell their products
and their wives sell thick woolen long jones.
There is a statue of a famous writer he looked patrician, but mostly
he suffers the indignity of seagull droppings.
The lady who protected horses was regarded as eccentric,
 but she lives on in songs and tales.
The boy saw in a café two ladies he sensed he knew; little did 
he knows they were, as time rolled on- one at the time, wives.
When the boy came home, his mother was out of hospital,
 boiling potatoes and frying sliced turnips.

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