Nigel Lawrence
Then Came a Poem About Making Jam
Half way through the reading
the room filled with the wisdom of gingham,
empty jars and circles of paper on the Dutch dresser
opaque as a grandmother’s cataracts.
It’s a strawberry afternoon and we are back
with your maiden aunt, before the Bomb
or the arrival of television
in the village, with a big
meaningless kettle on the range
and shucked apricot stones in a sock.
Oh, stand by me now
uncle, grandfather, brother,
lend me your calloused hands, ulcers,
bowel cancer, early deaths in industrial accidents.
Help me to tell them how it was
between men. Let them taste our silences too.
Pass me that spade, machine tool, forge,
share with me this engine footplate.
Then fill their afternoons with gobs of spit,
coal dust and broken backs.
They can keep their jam.
Page(s) 19
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