Memories #1 by Barry Charman (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)

Memories #1
by Barry Charman

Earliest?

I remember driving a car full of spiders
I didn’t know they were in the back seat
my passengers all this time

It was abandoned in the garden
I wasn’t really driving it till
that night when they gave me
directions in a real bad dream

Go left here
be afraid of us for twenty years
Go right at the next scream
that’s us waving goodbye

There is nothing before
no grandparents to recall
friends faces have peeled off over time
school is a blur of laughter

PHOTOGRAPH: The author in the garden, summer 1982, at age three.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is about my earliest memory, one that has accrued a strange mythic power over the years. I remember the moment vividly, if nothing else from that time. This poem is also about memory, and how much is lost, and how strange the things that remain are.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barry Charman is a writer living in North London, UK. He has been published in Ambit, The Alarmist, Bare Fiction Magazine, and Firewords Quarterly. He has poems published online at Every Day Poets and Postcard Poems & Prose. He has more recently had poems published in The Linnet’s Wings and Lunar Poetry.