Darwen, Lancashire  

I come from a town where the tower’s a salt cellar 

and it rains sarsaparilla, 

where soaked folks would give you their last umbrella, 

where flatcap vowels choir a colloquial a capella, 

where closed mills still clothe streets of storytellers. 

Yes, I come from that street where the cobbles are pea pies 

and puddles give colour like dyes, 

where the saddlers have tongued leather since 1895, 

where the church face tocks analogue and the days plod clockwise, 

where fencetops are bunting, back doors mouths open wide. 

See, I come from that house where we travelled by book, not car, 

and my brother’s breeze of guitar, 

where we shared rice n’ chips, thanked our swirling artex stars, 

where the van tea was sweet pink, hot rows scrappy-scrabble-spars, 

where my Gran gift-gabbed sayings like “she’s pots for jam jars” (triple letter score). 

And I come from my body where the sugar of words’ drawl 

spread like urban sprawl, 

where blood busses bees shuttling past skins of stone walls, 

where honeyed lanes lead to a hiveheart like a village hall, 

where my bric-a-brac brain/hand dances fêtes – I invite you all. 

So, I come from this mind where place compasses like a dome 

with a minaret-metronome, 

where mother’s milk music swells fertile as loam, 

where pitch-night and fork-light ballet between dawn and gloam, 

where ever I hat my poetry, like a rock dove, I lay home.