Homing

• ''For years you kept your accent''
• ''in a box beneath the bed,''
• ''the lock rusted shut by hours of elocution''
• ''how now brown cow''
• ''the teacher's ruler across your legs.''
• ''We heard it escape sometimes,''
• ''a guttural uh on the phone to your sister,''
• ''saft or blart to a taxi driver''
• ''unpacking your bags from his boot.''
• ''I loved its thick drawl, g's that rang.''
• ''Clearing your house, the only thing''
• ''I wanted was that box, jemmied open''
• ''to let years of lost words spill out -''
• ''bibble, fittle, tay, wum,''
• ''vowels ferrous as nails, consonants''
• ''you could lick the coal from.''
• ''I wanted to swallow them all: the pits,''
• ''railways, factories thunking and clanging''
• ''the night shift, the red brick''
• ''back-to-back you were born in.''
• ''I wanted to forge your voice''
• ''in my mouth, a blacksmith's furnace;''
• ''shout it from the roofs,''
• ''send your words, like pigeons,''
• ''fluttering for home.''