Sixes
 
When I was six, I tumbled down
the rabbit-hole with Alice. I loved
the tetchy caterpillar, and the Turtle.
 
I could have put that Hatter in his place,
and told a better story than the dormouse
- treacle-well, indeed! - that would have had
the three of them transfixed - and thankfully,
speechless. Oh, and it was always six!
 
Always the day’s best moment, always tea-time.
Over the fields from school, the pretty cows
heads down and busy. In the hungry hour
 
I used to draw real trees, not lollipops
but tapered trunks and webs of twigs
and shaded clouds beyond. Birds, though,
I never got quite right, made only two or three
far off. One day, in that same hour,
 
my father brought six kittens to be drowned.
We held them under water by the scruff,
two by two, till the bubbles stopped.
That done, and the corpses buried,
ten minutes before the hour of six
 
I took another drawing-sheet, and drew
a Cheshire cat with jagged stripes,
its mouth an m that used to be a bird,
turned over, venomously grinning.