*

Mountain Ana made the phone to scream.

Squeal of a thousand and one pigs!

Fingers of pain scratch my brain…

 She is upset that Gramps has traded her ring.

‘Soz, Mountain Ana.’

*

When Gramps turned up wearing Nancy’s gold ring,

Jenny thought it was a hoot.

Her hoot-face is for the moment still.

It possesses a distant smile.

Intuition – ‘just like Becky’s hoot-face.’

*

Becky’s sulk-face is adamant with indignation.

If she only knew how perilous it is to neglect the young.

*

…Our roles are reversed for the tale of mum and dad

and a kitchen knife, which Fiona tells in sobs on the stairway.

Something I said has recalled her feather streaked cheeks of pain.

 She laughs, and we go on up to talk about a tennis ball turned inside out…

 *

Becky speaks quietly but her quiet voice banishes

distance like a shout, “Josh, come back inside.”

 *

Is this redemption, or merely the wisdom of being old enough to know better?

With almost perfect symmetry little Josh wants to take some flowers back to Mum.

 He plucks from the two Laburnum grown together over a garden gate:

harmonious estate, or the strain of embrace, stretching… to cleave?

The scent from the cups is intoxicating, and yellow, Becky’s colour…

O’ my tyger tree, your blossom will spread that smile over lips

which profess to disdain flowers.

…On the way back Josh has an idea: he wants to visit his Dad.

*

Regardless of content, our most intense moments have a habit of assuming ritual clarity.

Together, the figures our characters cut are colourful, and bright, and amusing;

the wheel-spinning white car which your mother read about in my story,

or Roma’s amber earrings, Louise and Paula, uncharacteristically, dressed in black.

Gemma, who plays football, and for whom love… is too painful?

Did I really say that?

She wants to travel, or that?

‘Me too! ’/ ‘That’s how I drink’/ ‘I do.

If only it, and you, and I were true!

Even Sandra mimicking my mudra, and Mimi’s mint.

*

In sleep I strike a Centaur dead,

the blow reverberates in my head.

For a time I cannot face the open sale of lace.

*

Becky is beautiful but kind and cruel, in turns.

Her eyes flash when I call her a vamp,

and when I bad mouth her boyfriend.

 “You make me laugh,” she says, “can I kill you?”

She has the hair of a teenage friend,

the eyes of an old love, the profile and

features of a desirable aunt, the body of

the goddess Parvati, and a smile like paradise.

Her mischief resembles that of a childhood adversary.

 “I’m going to turn you into an ass,” she smiles.

 Her hoot-face is reserved for her most cunning lies,

 “I thought I’d see you there,” yet she still succeeds in soothing the situation.

 ‘Does she really sleep with him?’

“I’m sorry about your Grandad,” she says, like Mum at such times.

Warmth floods the room…

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