It’s a child’s jigsaw
one piece informs the others
scattered over 50 years
a bit of pond here
a section of drawbridge
some sky
under the couch
let the pieces run
through your fingers
standing at four
looking at a country cottage
from the road
the trees
form an arch as the
dappled sun carves the shadows
Is it Waterfall Gully
or Deviation Road?

More pieces:
an old black Wolseley
a wicker basket
dandelions and celery
faint now, close to fiction
but it’s there.

In my late 20s
in Lancashire
a remarkable verisimilitude
of that cottage, the tree canopy
and soft sun
I stopped the car
checked my pieces
and it was close
even the celery
but something was missing

maybe now
as then and back then
the original conception
was flawed

now the picture builds again
old on new
new on old
and I recast the pieces.