Born at the age of six in a somewhat confused state

I snapped the branches from my father’s young apple tree.

He sent me to bed. I never did understand why.

My father was clever, a high achiever by anyone’s standards

but he was unable to read me. I used this failing. I still do.

Guilting him into overlooking my own deficiencies.

My mother was my father’s armour although

she believed it the reverse and she thought me like herself.

She was wrong and she was right as mothers often are.

My parents were Salford; city pavements and hard graft.

I was small Lancashire village; country lanes and rolling hills.

We met somewhere in the suburbs and shared our discontent.

I am not sure when I became myself, sometime in my twenties,

or at least that’s what I would guess. A slow awakening,

that’s for sure. I found a lost soul in a small terraced house,

we planted seeds together and grew three children.

I poked them with a stick and I fed them. I often wonder

why I was so surprised, when they in their turn broke branches.