If we feel a chill each year
on the day we will die,
does the involuntary nod

I perform here – this oblique
junction complicated further
by the church road forking –

signal back to a lost memory?
Did we once turn off the B road
onto this less-than-four-metres-wide road,

and did we pause here, my father,
long after the non-existent traffic
had sailed past?

I brake, I reverse, I rest
on the wrought-iron seat,
high and low equidistant.