Peter Bland
Seaside donkeys . . .
trudging home
to eat black dandelions
in a sooty yard
behind the railway sheds
in ’49.
After dark
we’d climb the fence
for a free ride
but they’d gallop off
to lap up stars
from a cracked tin bath
or lick the salt
from each others’ ears.
Drudges,
most of them,
past their prime,
but at thruppence a trot
along Scalby sands
they rarely wandered
far from our minds.
On grandma’s wall
one carried Christ
through the gates
of a blue Jerusalem
with the sun
beating down
as it rarely did
in Scarborough
even in late July.
All our lives
we’ve remembered them,
nature’s stoics,
imprisoned
in that fouled-up yard
until the next time
holidays happened
or gods
rode into town to die.
