Impressions of My Great Aunt Hazel
Once upon a time
there lived a tailoress,
parishioner, dancer
at teatime get-togethers.
She was the object of proposals,
subjected to gifts,
the speaker of refusals
(kindly put) but plumped
for the floral clad
bosom of spinsterhood.
So no more were there bluebirds,
eager-beaked and delicate of wing,
lifting back her bedspread by its fine lace trimming.
No more snugly-fitting golden slipper offers,
up-for-granting wishes, prophecies.
Tiny suitcases were packed:
acutely tuned narrating mice
no longer up for singing out her life.
Just sister Ida
in the corner
with blue and twisted poison tongue,
tailoress likewise
but eyes like pins stabbed in.
Dog-chocolate hearted;
brother Harold did as Harold can,
veins drawn slovenly slow
through a life lived from the frying pan.
This state not due to some stretched spell
of spell-induced sleep:
slackened apples lay intact
in a bowl on the TV.
Her princes all had come,
been snubbed, and gone.
Quietly she lived on
with Ida's pin-cushion face,
Harold's queasy chuckling
and her music box and
Some Enchanted Evening.
Page(s) 40-41
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