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Sue Moules

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Longevity

Hannah, propped up in bed cuts a cake
to celebrate a hundred years of life.
Two elderly ladies look on and smile,
these are her daughters,
with brown time-freckles on their hands.

Born at ‘Bryn Mair’,
the white house on the hill
with its steps rising from road to door,
a red telephone box and a walled-in post box.

Once the centre of the village,
where her mother sold clothes, groceries and eggs.
That was before the time we know
when they came and cut down
the orchard opposite.
A landscape of birds felled.
Six breeze-block bungalows built on a site
large enough for one farmhouse.

Hannah left ‘Bryn Mair’ long ago,
in her memory she sees trees
when she looks through the window.
The telegram is a memento for others.

Her life is in bed in an old people’s home.
That never happened in those days at ‘Bryn Mair’.
The elderly sat warm in blankets by the iron stove,
a chair near the window that looked out
to where hens pecked sunlight from the grass.

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