Mud

Mud

Your mother's mother
has passed into the stuff
of myth and might have

been given some ginger
by the likes of Saint
George or some other

punishment glutton
who liked to do battle
with monsters or tackle

the tougher kind of
mutton but all I can picture
from your portrait is

a stick and a growl and
a tendency to hit the
knuckles, sadistic, as if

they were flies on a
joint; and how (a sweet,
mishearing, deliciously

linguistic), your small
ears, clogged with
scouse, heard your

mam shorten mother to
"Muth'" and from that
day forward as if your

tongues were sealed
with fire her name,
irreversibly, was 'Mud'