Maynrys
 
Hedges full of fuchsia ripe for popping;
old-fashioned roses, a garden sloping down
to a boundary stream, and further on a bridge
that marked the known end of our world;

here we would sit and squabble and make up,
looking over at the track that went through trees
up to the fields beyond, and looking back
to the pebble-dashed house that was granny's.

She had an old harmonium, salvaged
from some decaying chapel, on which she bashed
out rousing hymns and popular parlour ballads;
it wheezed like a smoker on the stairs.

At tea time, from a pantry, dark and cool
with undertones of earth, she would bring out
cheese and ham and milk and battenberg -
that store-bought madeleine can still transport me

to Maynrys, our old word for happiness.
They took a chance with that but they were right,
or so we thought. This is as far back
as I can remember or well imagine.

David Callin

If you have any comments on this poem, David Callin would be pleased to hear them.