Known Locally Poem by Mark Christmas

The flaxen hair had long since disappeared
and had been replaced
by the melancholy sheen of aging;
she smiled as a pint of warm ale
was poured
in the dry heat of a dog day past.

The stone building of travellers rest sits
in a Victorian moment
next to the bone yard of ancestral history,
with its traditionally drunken headstones.
They read as tales of times when a family of six children,
grew into the individuality
of a single orphan.

How science has progressed,
yet the memories live on,
trapped in the souls of those left behind.

Near the north wall of the hallowed ground, lies ‘Jonny’;
a schoolmate,
a son,
a brother,
a father,
now the shroud of his passing lies over those who remain
waiting their own turn to be carried through
the stiff wrought iron gates,
on the shoulders of brethren
to be turned back to the dust from whence,
life continues to re-emerge.

She tells me,
as I sip the tepid tang of hops and honey,
how she wakes with the wakes
of the wakes she has seen,
how in her own wake, annals trail like a churning sea of the night
with passengers who drown and sink
within her sleeping mind.




The truth she offers;
is of how she does not feel the feeling
a mother feels when holding ones child
and how the grandmother, often most tender,
had been committed after the event,
to join him earlier than planned.


The time ticks as the sound of the carpenters perpetual motion, is in recognition of the passings.