Deckchairs

These webbed deckchairs have followed me around for half a century. In the garden at Cowley one was set either side of the concrete birdbath, its worn-down robin’s face furred with lichen. My sister, long-gone, would sit and kick her legs like a metronome: her school skirt, her tight braids, the sun white as goat milk over the workshop. All the teenage summers they are scattered like a fierce rash over the stone beach at Brighton. How unsteady they are, this army of toddlers in their elasticated nappies. And now these, sprawled near the Brooklyn river - the immigrant family of four in their emerald finery and the newlyweds with that last white flower, their knees touching, the hushed chatter of imminent honeymoon and scattered chili flake.