Essendon is drenched today. On Albion
And Buckley where my Granddad learnt to walk,
To talk, lies last night’s deluge in puddles,
In screen of watery sheen, while vermillion
Morning climbs the eastern sky. When we talk
Of heritage, does it sit in huddles
Like these? old buildings nestled in new ones
And the streets changing names, permanent as chalk,
Captured somewhere in memories like muddles?
Sometimes, when brain’s geography failed,
He fancied himself back on these streets,
And spoke of St Thomas’s where he’d been hailed
As Stupid Stuart. What memory repeats
Is mystery; beneath rainy road is soil
That, pre-Alzheimer’s, Granddad learnt to toil.
The Consolations of Writing 
We loved this poem. Your grandfather grew up on Pascoe vale road only to have that part of it renamed by my time as Fitzgerald road!
Thanks! Yes, Pascoe Vale Road diverted from the street where Granddad lived and Fitzgerald Road was made its own street. I still sometimes drive down it when I want to turn left onto Pascoe Vale Road. Funny to think sometimes how the new-looking road would seem to Granddad now.
I was intrigued the first time, but the second reading was even better. The shifting rhyme scheme beautifullyillustrates the memory-shifts of those struggling with Alzheimer’s. The picture was beautiful. Another excellent job! Keep writing.
Beautifully illustrates, I meant to say.
Sigh!
Thanks so much. That was exactly what I was wanting to capture with the poem. The place where my grandfather grew up (just down the road from where I now live) has changed so much since he lived there, such that the name of the road isn’t even the same. Reflecting on that, I wondered how these changes might have seemed to him in his last years as past and present coalesced in his mind. Thanks for the encouragement!
I am glad you were encouraged.