Aceldama

It still broods when I drive by slowly,

as I am drawn to do whenever my travels

take me near the house where he grew up,

and even as I write I feel it watching me.

The sun never shone there in my memory

but despite the tragedies of his childhood,

they dug in deeper to defy the malevolence,

and grew potatoes and made cheesecake,

and all of a sudden we had grown up,

and he took me to one of the upper rooms

and explained how something so awful

had haunted him there he couldn’t

or wouldn’t tell me in any detail, and I

could only imagine his pain as I lay in the

guest room that night and struggled for breath

as something pressed heavy against my chest.

John H Davies

10th May 2011