One...

From everywhere else to a first memory

I come from, and sing of, green carpet
up the side of the bath and false memory
of the feel of that. I come from a bed I slept on for years

as a mattress on the floor, from the painting of a tree
in the corner above me, from a wonderment for the thrill
of the wind and its movement through leaves. There is more to me

than this, you understand, but impediment is rife. I come from
house parties and sitting on my dad’s tapping feet
while he played sessions in pub after pub and our own front room.

None of these is first because some will always be wrong
I am germolene on my first spot, hands-and-knees-horses,
poems and poems and back-tickled songs sung in the dark.

I am in a room in a dream I have no memory of otherwise
and so come upon the idea that this must be the first: fear
and a resolution I am told it is impossible to engineer.