Listening to the rain in the dark
Yes .
The radio is too much - they
Keep talking
And music has too
Many notes
Swirling crescendos
Bangs and whistles
Please give me
Rain in darkness
Then
Silence
As the world
Turns slowly
Round
A G 17/06/2020
May Only ( Run out of names )
M O was for May Only ... She was my grandfather’s sister and I used to go stay with her and her friend Kathleen in the holidays
They were teachers at a girls school, May taught Maths and Kay taught Biology so they had long summer holidays too -
We went all over the outskirts of Salisbury and into the New Forest - planting minature forests of seedlings in china bowls that we got from Bring and Buy sales and gathering samples of fungi and mosses - taking them back to the house and looking at them under microscopes and drawing what we saw. Insects too - whatever we could find and bring back. I still have a drawing of a mosquito larva which takes up a whole page
It was so sad - people said - May had had a fiance but he was killed in the war - and after that there were just not enough men to go round - so sad.
That is what people said.
But I thought that their lives were such fun.
And in the old photos they are always smiling
I wish I had ever told them how much they taught me . But I never did .
May was the youngest of nine - all with strings of names but by the time they got to her - and her only a girl - the imagination and maybe the enthusiasm had run right out and being that she was born in May - that is what they decided to call her
They took her to the preacher who had christened the rest of the family
What you want call this child ?
May
That all ?
May only
And so she was christened - and that was that
And this is a true story - nobody believed it of course - the family was well known for competitively
fanciful stories - but my father has seen her death certificate and swears that was the name that was on it in writing.
A G 17/06/2020
Comments
Post a Comment