Women of Small Histories (I.P.)

 The year is nineteen-forty-seven...
it is summer – one of the hottest
on record.  Round about midday,
and a storm threatens.  The sound
of distant thunder, perhaps,
rumbles down the chimney...
a cat, maybe, sits on the hearth
and the air is as thick as the piecrust
baking in the black-leaded stove.
 

My mother, and hers, are sitting
round the kitchen table.  It is
Monday...this is the day for cold meat
and apple-pie; each week the same.
Both of them kitted out in pinnies –
hair tied up in a scarf...it’s washing day
and there’s a blow on in the yard.
The Corona Man – cart and dray,
knocks on the door; Gran, as ever,
as always, buys three lemonades.
 

The clock on the dresser strikes
twelve – a Westminster chime;
I can almost hear it.  The rent man
calls, and the pig-bin’s been collected
and Roger the St. Bernard’s been round
for his usual bone from the Sunday roast.
 

Until now it’s been an unsurprising day –
and then my mother’s pains begin,
and all this while I’ve been sleeping
in the folds of the wind that inhabits
the sheets, hanging on the line.
 

The gin and cold bath hadn’t worked –
and knitting needles, sure not all
they’re cracked up to be.
 

A crying shame – the extraordinary
becomes the mundane; a child is born –
a new life is created, and to them
all it means is another mouth to feed,
in deepest, darkest Deptford; namely
Drakes Buildings. So, from now on,
I go it alone in the world, with no thanks
owed to women such as these, who view
the whole damned, wonderful shebang
as nothing more than merely marking time
in the mad march of days.