OLD GOLD

           Any three wishes?  Any three?

           Then take me back to treasure,

           crossed swords

           and stolen chocolate.

           First I would have to be six again

           or seven

           in school corduroy shorts.

           Prompted by a dream

           I'd kneel in the cycle shed

           prising a flagstone up with rusted screwdriver.

           The raw smell is with me yet.

           The stone weighed more than I,

           kept slipping back.

           What would I see?

           A Saxon crown or golden torque?

           An Ashton Gifford Hoard?

           I never saw.

           Second, I stood beside a friend -

           God knows just who he was -

           in green-blue segmented school caps.

           We unbuttoned flies

           laying gentlemen's bets

           and aimed our gold trajectories

           up over George's woodpile.

           Since then I've seen Alhambra jets

           yet nothing that was quite

           so gravity-defying as our piss.

           Whose was it arced the farthest?

           If I remembered that,

           do you think I'd need to go back?

           And, third, I stole

           into Lady Hedley's storeroom.

           No locks, just pushed the door.

           A golden arc's distance

           from buried treasure and George's woodpile,

           there were racks of green apples

           and, somehow mislaid among them,

           a monster-tablet of the blackest

           of black cooking chocolate.  I scratched back

           gold foil, broke off a slab of unrationed passion.

           It flaked big as hell

           and bitter as youth

           under predatory teeth.

           And I cannot believe

           that bare-kneed boy was me,

           however much he's marked

           my dwindling memory.