My Old Neighbourhood Lives On... Poem by Mark Heathcote

My old neighbourhood lives on in my thoughts
White doves on communal greens kite above.
Each one landing, walking like-cosmonauts
Each with a fig branch of love pecking crumbs-

Brushed out of aprons from mothers in flight
Between kitchen jobs and school gate runs
A lost world found for a while watertight.
But like all foreign cosmonauts like gulls.

All your pigeons come home to roost.
Then you realise fairy tales are lies.
And the cold-truth is finally-deduced
They're just childhood moments we've-polarized.