Working Mother off Nights
I slept on the floor before the present day
A childish spawn of the ‘once in a lifetime!’
Glimmer in my father’s dead ‘glittery’ eyes
Then — and also
To hide from the demon faces that bulged from the awning
Over my bed.
She slept on the sofa because a settee wasn’t for the likes of us
Off night shifts at the Luton and Dunstable General Hospital.
As a ‘working mother’ we lived between ‘conversations’
Cut short at the school gates
By housewives, mothers and Christian women
With a Catholic tinge to their hair-dos.
I fell on the dog once,
And she didn’t bite
Until I offered her a bite of my biscuit.
Then she did.
A wife and mother and midwife to others
And sometimes to me
When we weren’t sleeping
and she remembered her hearing aid.
To hear me by and by.
My father, it turned out later in life,
Lived two separate lives.
Or maybe we could have should have would have known
If we didn’t sleep so much on the sofa and floor.
And remembered our hearing aids.
Drink driving was okay
Cos everyone did it in those days.
And they smoked and smoked and smoked
Because, I’m told, nobody ever told them otherwise.
Both at once! Well, what a treat that was!
Having a separate life must have been hard
Just to remember everyone’s names
For a start.
It must have been.
obscene.
I’d have resented me if I were him too
Can’t kick a football in a straight line boy!
Rather write a story about a round ball in a square net
Put him in the corner with a bottle of coke and a bag of crisps
And he could pretend I wasn’t his problem.
For long
We all turn into our fathers one day
Cos that simply isn’t true
If we try hard enough
We can turn into our mum.
But I don’t want that either because
a girl once said I looked like her and that was ugly
Cos she had a blackened soul
So I turned out to be the rainbow
At the end of the pot of gold.
