The baby boy bore
upon his tender jaw
a mark of birth
the size of a sterling coin.

A penny
the pale pink
of a musk stick
the faint fur
of an infant’s cheek.

In the currency
of the times
the innocence
would eventually
be deemed
unsightly
unseemly
a hindrance
a hurdle
a faux-pas

were it to
spread
traverse
grow into
a threepence
a sixpence
a shilling
a florin
a crown.

A little boy
in a hospital bed.
Stiff white sheets
nurses in light blue.
From the third-floor window
a pretty view
of trees, paths,
parklands.

He bears bandages
itchiness
but no pain.

Visits from mum and dad
a gift
a tin toy aeroplane.

The schoolboy
was unfussed
unfazed
by the scar from the scalpel
a kind of sleeping ‘y’
a pronged path
that grew with each grade.

The hospital
and its theatres
became familiar.
Tonsils, ears, testicles.

Out the window
each time
the comfort
of the canopy
of trees.

The teenager
may have joked of his jawline
“Was in a fight
came off second best
with a flick knife.”

The young man
sported, eventually,
a scraggly ginger-brown beard.

Not to cover his tracks
Just no need for
No time for
scraping and smoothing
and shaving and gazing
upon himself.

Trimming now grey follicles
facing a mirror
snipping with small scissors
he remembers
the views from the hospital beds
(and the toy tin aeroplane).

The manicuring done
his fingers
search and trace
and touch
not so much
the neatness of
the paths and parklands
beneath the canopy of bristles
but the faint lines
of the long-dormant ‘y’

a forked track
making its way
through a forest
year after year after year.