What is this, a family outing?
Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him
as I open the car door, climb into the front seat,
remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe.
My brother, aged nine, threading himself through
the boot, carefully edging past dismantled furniture,
crawling over bags and bags of garden rubbish,
finding himself a boy-shaped space to sit cross-legged.
My mother is in her usual place in the front passenger seat.
A long plank of rotten wood running the length of the car,
balanced somehow on the head rests, forces her to twist
her body, blocking out the view of my dad in the driver’s seat,
and me, aged five, squashed next to a box of plastic toys.
Yes, dad, I want to say to him again, even though, now,
Covid has made family outings the stuff of dreams
and solo journeys are what we have all come to expect.
Still, I decide it’s time to transport them to my car,
like an away team beaming up to the Starship Enterprise.
My dad, first, screwdriver in his hand, wearing blue overalls,
fresh from tinkering with loose shelves in the garage.
Then my mother, flour on her nose from making scones,
and my brother, complete with a bucket of soapy water,
complaining that he was just about to wash his own car.
But I don’t stop there. I summon up all of our pets,
past and present. The hamsters nestle together in the glovebox.
Some, the dogs, cats, guinea pigs, are happy to sit on knees,
whilst others, the pair of budgies, prefer to fly alongside us.
I hitch our old holiday caravan to the tow bar of my Fiat 500
for my aunty and uncle, a few second cousins I have conjured.
Ghosts of grandparents and great grandparents and generations
going way back hover above us, or else flank us on either side
in their spectre Ford Cortinas, their Lambretta scooters,
more ancestors follow on behind in coaches, horse carriages.
And we arrive at the tip like a convoy, pull up together,
gather around in expectation, as if at a drive-in movie theatre.
Watch, as my dad hurls waste into the open-mouthed bins.
See his chuffed grin, await his infamous signal to cheer.
And we do, we do. We all applaud. All two hundred of us.
Jeanette Burton is a tutor with The Writing School. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, Mslexia, Dreich, The Friday Poem and she has been placed in several competitions. Her debut pamphlet is published by Candlestick Press. @Writing5chool on Twitter.