I wrote this after visiting the Concrete Menagerie in Branxton, Northumberland. I also made a filmpoem of this for the Read our Lips Filmpoem competiton 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKF0BH4b64g

 

My fingers trace the indentations pressed

By previous hands; the clefts and dents

Formed in cement by an ageing man

For (as some would think him) an imperfect son

For whom, they decided, there would be

No institution save the one called family.

A garden to make a boy smile –

A parade of baby rabbits, of peacocks

And sharks with cow’s teeth; bottles and shells.

Baby polar bear sucking his mother’s teat;

Churchill flicking his trademark two-fingered salute while

Bob Fraser, shepherd, kneels with champion border collie –

Misshapen and faithfully squatting,

Dried leaf ears pricked in opposite directions.

Riders sit astride mutated selection of mounts,

Green algae’d bridles parched in cracking strands

From mouths that spit their rusted snaffles;

Reins dangle in slithers fallen from clumsy hands

As empty stirrups tinkle, triangles of wind struck percussion.

Human mouths display

Their dentured pleasure with ivory grins;

Lawrence of Arabia leers goofily

With glazed eyes fixed on desert vista ahead -

Coloured marbles half pushed into eye socket bulges;

Blue and white striped, green and swirling.

Paint tins drool dried custard runs

Beneath screwdriver jemmied lids,

Kinked into unsuitability.

Wheelbarrow in greenhouse still contains

Ruptured gnome side by side with pert breasted nymph,

Arm thrown over forehead in woe-is-me pose.

Unrequired antlers gather dust on table tops

Like seized contraband –

Half formed life-sized lady propped,

Cobwebs swinging thickly from her skirt.

Me, crouching to peer at letters

Scored into surfaces - mottoes

Weathered to vowel-less nonsense.

A place for spirits to gather, when evening falls

And shadows throw a ragged quilt across

The crusted backs that brace the stillborn zoo.

Three hundred painted headstones

Divining the presence of ghosts through fixed feet -

An only child twisted from this earth;

A wife - the layers of Flodden slain

Frozen in a place somewhere between

Love and concrete; death and memory.