Palsy Dreaming Poem by Christopher Hopkins

Her invented life, never came back home.
The front door still open to her little refugees.
The Chapel stone, now colder.
Its spaces as black as the wet slates,
the floorboard's worn tread,
its only record of the hay days
of standing room only.

The walk to schooling was only up the hill.
Learnt the chemistry of pierced sides,
heart and blood in rhythm and rhyme,
bounded by stencilled columns.
Then the truth be woken aloud,
by the grey pin suited master himself.
Even drunks stop to listen baptised by his spit.

Then new college took the best,
and with it the town's anaemic breath.
The bramble grew thick and quick,
while decisions hung like washing lines.
They'll never come back.
They have their own lives now,
away from her palsy dreaming.