Remembering Iris

My time in London with daughter Debora was fun. She is working on a new book and planning the launch  of her marvelous ( mother's pride...) book Gifts from the Garden on the 20th. 

We sorted out some papers and she handed me  a paper with a rather dark, long poem of mine which I'd entirely forgotten. Reading it again I remembered the girl who was its  inspiration - a friend I had when I was nine and she was fourteen. She used to call for me many days to come 'out to play'. Even at that age I thought her home set-up was puzzling. In retrospect her friendship with me was equally puzzling.I now feel that in writing this I was recovering some memory. 

The poem was first written in 1996.  I have edited it further to post it on the blog. It's still dark...

Hope at least you find it interesting.Wx

Remembering Iris

 Men open their wide mouths

teeth bite, bite like lions - 

soft hands, smooth pussy paws -

only going for the cream

lapping it with sandpaper tongues:

blue eyes, large black irises

In the house of her aunt and uncle

is a girl - dreaming, putty faced -

and on her bed  a bedspread.

whose white hanging-down  tassels 

vanish one by one

bitten off by pussy cats, they say.

Their house stands in our row -

Jerry-built like ours, fenced with chicken wire -

although unlike us they have no chickens

The aunt and uncle have red faces  

his more bulbous, hers sharp with make-up,

her hair all yellow feathers, sides upswept.

My father - prone to bad mistakes -

buys a dozen chicks for breakfast eggs.

and on a string above their fluffy heads  

he swings his wedding ring to sex them.

But his ring swings to the left and

tells us they are cocks, every one

No morning chucky eggs for us!

Still, we feed the chicks, clean their cage

cluck over them. But, come Christmas, 

we choke them. Not my father - all soft heart -

but my uncle who smiles as his strong fingers   

squeeze out their little chicken lives.

And by Christmas Day the dreaming girl

has palmed her savings, run right away.

Her aunt calls her a sly cat –

bad to the core  and so ungrateful –

as she burns the bedspread in the garden

fenced all round  with chicken wire.

© Wendy Roberton 1996/2012