Grandmother Cash
When the world was in a furore
of jack-boots and a ballyhoo
of bulletins cast from the fogged
up wireless, my grandmother beat
her disgust into the apple batter
and stalked off to the orchard
with her fruit crop held like a gun.
Invisibly she could kill --
skin the big buck's belly
with her slim bone knife,
her hands and forearms
steeped in blood. Tip-toed
for flight, I held my breath,
good as cream, and when she was cross
I crouched low, fiat-backed
like a toad in the damp artichoke patch.
Her favourite word was presently
against which I was propped.
Portly she was not -- no not
that cushion you to her soft
bouncy bosom sort of grandmother.
Her chest was like a ladder-back
chair with no bulge for a heart.
But some years later
she surprised me.
When her only son was killed,
she dragged me to the edge
of the beet-root field
and called his name
to the setting sun
which turned brown-pulped
and flecked like rotten fruit.
Page(s) 36
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