Priorities
Sunday, and strong rain pours down
on the small house in the field,
lashing the windows,
filling the guttering
turning the careful garden into a morass
My father rages.
“It’ll be like the great Grimpen Mire out there!
Buggering up my young carrots and spuds!”
“Language? Never mind language!
Our crops, that’s what you want to worry about, girl!”
And he stamps out in his wellies,
leaving my mother, tutting over the washing up.
And me, aged five, staring at my feet, and at a different doom.
For tomorrow, with all that water in the lanes,
It would be Wellingtons to school
and I could never tug them off in time for the Register,
so I’d be marked Late Again, and in deep disgrace.
Page(s) 49
magazine list
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