Madeline

To feel my feet crunch on the gravel path,
hands, brushing brambles and box-hedges.
To knock on the dead leaf door;
Hear: the sound of fox-knocker on wood.
See the mice curtains twitch;
Your red robin face, through glass, materialise.
Your tea, ginger cake and chipped fine
china smile; your voice boiling and
bubbling from the arctic kitchen
the smell of dark furniture from the North,
as I wait with the framed family photographs,
and ivory cutlery in the canteen.