Memory is the mothership.
I wash and rinse pots and pans,
remembering the scraggly tall
European refugees working
in the kitchen of the boarding school
I went to in the Fifties. I can’t
remember ever knowing their names
yet here they work, crusty aprons on
and giant silver trays glinting
as they walk toward the spreading tree
where we queue in the shade, hungry
as growing boys can be, and take
one gigantic slice of fresh baked bread
spread with strawberry jam. Ah,
that jam!