Driving back from the Post Office

Where I’d posted two special parcels

I punch on the radio, R4 as usual

The weather forecast is sunny, warm

And light breezes for a few days

 

Then it switches to Election discussions

With strident denunciations of one or

Other, and how their pot of gold is

Just over the Rainbow if we’ll only believe

Leaning forward I switch to Radio 2

 

It plays, “You are the Wind beneath my Wings”,

By Bette Midler and suddenly I am transported

To a School Assembly many, many years ago now

And my middle daughter steps out of the radio

My eyes mist and a vice-like grief grips me

 

It’s not there all the time, it couldn’t be

Briefly I had forgotten, despite the parcel

I felt happy in the sun, just like in Paris

A few short days ago.  I was whistling,

“You are my Sunshine”, to myself

 

A blossom tree unfolding, or cycling past

A remarkable stream of bubbling water

Sometimes a stone, or a shell distracts me

But not for long.  One memory or another

Catches up with me.  The lost past.