Winsford
Angi Holden
Afternoon tea:
scones and jam and clotted cream.
He turns over the paper napkin
and draws a teapot.
Spout to the left – Chester, he says –
handle to the right:
Macclesfield, Congleton.
A knobbed lid on the top:
Warrington.
He marks the centre with a single cross.
That’s Winsford. Where I come from.
Thirty years later I am asked the same question.
I turn over the paper napkin
and draw my Cheshire teapot.
The single cross.
There, I say,
That’s where I come from.
Author's note: Winsford is a small town in mid-Cheshire, UK and has been my home since my marriage nearly 40 years ago. This poem, describing my first 'introduction' to the town, has been previously published on the county's Lines on a Map project.
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