Enter down concrete steps
To the basement flat
Iron railings
Black door
Red painted hall
Condensation on the floor.

Two up, two down
The basement flat
Scrunched together
Back to back
Three sisters, mum and dad
Then the brothers quickly had.

Grandad's face always stern
Impeccably dressed
In shirt and vest
Roast dinners
were the best
Plates on a dresser rest.

Out the back a concrete patch
To play a cricket bat
Across from that
These tenement stacks
Elm trees give a screen
To this suffocating scene.

Street life was the choice
It gave freedom a voice
The boys gathered out late
Playing football with their mates
Fathers called from indoors
Time to stop that ****** noise.

A mile or so stood the hoards
Of Wormwood Scrubs' prison floors
Then there was the track
White City and greyhound backs
Chelsea loved by all the boys
Arsenal just upped their score.

The skyline filled with birds
The trains go rattling by
And yet from this place
My father took himself a pace
Up the street and far away
On a bright and sunny day.

Mary x