I was here when that chestnut was grown from a conker
and the Paul’s Scarlet was a smaller thorny red spleen,
before a time lapse could record every sunset
and replay them in salmon and rose and golden and green.

I was here when poetry wrote itself in another language
in notebooks behind the graveyard where dead flowers go.
I was here when the sea covered all the fields, and I cycled
through the ocean on a pushbike where thrift and marram grass grow.

I was here and my heart recorded the windswept dreams
of a westward gaze over waves, and foam, and fears.
I was here speaking words I now barely recall
but I still carry all the years.