Upbringing updated

Keighley News district office
Myrtle Place, Bingley, West Yorkshire
1959

Impatience was my driven clockspring then,
Wound tightly by my adolescent need,
I yearned for girls but, even more, I sought
A better smithy for my wordsmithing.

A disliked workplace but, if truth be known,
That modest valley town was innocent,
A yardstick for the things that were to come,
An anvil base on which to shape and bend.

But youth confinèd to a teenage cell,
Finds just the bars and, through them, discontent,
Sees vaguest vistas of a sexual sort,
Dreams stories only wisdom may create.

I took the southern road, without goodbyes,
Swearing to flush these details down the tubes,
And found a wider, more rewarding world,
Plus all the doubtful gains of adulthood.

Yet, like dull bricks that built the house I own,
That old dull Place helped build the life I’ve led,
There’s time and space and even patience now,
The fire aspires and words gain relevance
.
What of that town that I once deemed to hate,
That sleeps, unhated, four hours’ drive up north?
Do lichens grow, are folks content, roads straight
But quaint? Adornment for my mantelpiece?