A very long time ago

Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City

Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,

In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected

A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.

except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.

Look, Drew, the
plums are in

pieces beneath
us. I dreamt:

a flower is not a heron
does not stand on one leg
spear-billed over golden carp

At dawn and dusk, my father
becomes a chant, that flies above
the courtyard of the old house

The leaves are a colour you’ve never seen
but that I will learn to expect
and there’s a fracas-induced full moon