blue memories

This postcard with its industrial
background and blue waters
reminds me of Chernobyl
and the unseen black rain falling
onto the sandpit in Japan, of my son
playing with his bucket and spade indoors,
of Nostalgia by Tarkovsky,
and of my first love revisited
in Italy, swimming together in the hot spring,
the man on the diving board of my father
and my first swim, of radiation, my first son,
of my first love, my first swim in blue memories
on a postcard.

By Stephen Pain

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