The Panda next door

Today’s challenge is to write our own poem in which we recount a childhood memory. We should try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

I thought I’d started this poem years back, but I could find no trace in my notes, so this formative memory has been written anew.

The afternoon summer sun of 60 years ago now warms my skin,
Blushing my mind into confusing shades.
It slows my breathing to a contemplative trickle,
And stops my eyes from wandering in this moment.

The sight bemused me long before I knew the meaning of the word.
The ragman’s horse, dogs and cats of all nominations, even ferrets,
These were common sights on our street;
But a Panda?

The Panda lived next door at number 63.
Built in the same red terrace bricks as ours,
Homes that housed railway workers who tended the steam trains
And miners that dug the coal to feed those glorious, gleaming, engines of old.

She, I knew she was a lady Panda because me mam told me,
She very rarely came out in the day,
I don’t think she liked the light.
You could tell because the curtains at 63 were always closed.

I can hear the cogs of my small brain ticking, whirring, asking.
Why would anyone keep a Panda in Mansfield?
Bamboo didn’t grow in the abandoned allotments
Or down by the river, or on the quarry’s edge.

I later found out she was fed raw shame for breakfast,
Served boiled anger for lunch,
And given a bowl of fresh violence for supper.

She looked sad and lonely, and
When I tried to look into her eyes,
To offer a comforting smile,
She turned her face away; and shuffle-shadowed back indoors.

Her slight misshaped face is a mural in my memory,
Moulded by the hands, fists and feet of her “keeper”.
That was the day I decided never to keep Pandas.
I never have; and never will.