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You really think that? she said.
No. I didn't mean that, not that,
But you did say it, didn't you?
Yes I did say it — It was just...
Then that was a particularly unpleasant thing to say.
But I didn't really mean it, I just didn't express...
You did say it?
Yes I did.
Well then...
Look, you know I did, I've told you I did and now I feel like saying it again.
What I got in the sick bay was a mixture of Hattie Jacques bossy and buxom and Rosa Kleb, the tip of her shoes deadly.
What I wanted was an Anna from Denmark, who came from her parents' little farm in Jutland and desperately wanted to meet well-behaved
sixteen year old English boys. She'd look after us, come and sit on the edge of my bed in her nightdress, dab my brow fevered with excitement and ask,
with a smile, if there was anything else she could do. But when I'd reach to touch a pale shoulder and, accidentally, her breast, just at the point
of touching, she'd dissolve, go to another boy — one more worthy, like Harris the captain of football.
If I believed in ghosts this is where I would find them, crouched close to pale waterways,
in reeds darkened by mud and water, a glow of golden straw where they reach for warmth in the salty air.
Only the marsh harriers would glimpse them as they screeched overhead in a tumble of earthward plunges.
Quicksilver sea grumbles into the staithe, nudges the hull of a row-boat, its paint old and peeled.
Clouds smudge the sky. I hear the rustle of reeds, a whispered conversation between lovers, tremulous, coming in on the wind.
Peter Phillips in collection Wide Skies, Salt and Best Bitter, 2005, Hearing Eye, ISBN 1-905082-03-7
The clock in my head strikes back to your death.
Our daughter is having a baby. I wonder if you know.
To My Daughter
You say you can't stop laughing when you learn you're having twins.
I hope you're still laughing in six months' time.
To My Grandchildren
I can see you in that cramped space feeling the certainty
of your mother's heart, looking out for each other.
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