Fragments 99    Real / Surreal  No 9

A Lifetime Ago

At the other end of a lifetime, when her husband traded City Desk from Flanders slime, Granny, too, was brave; stood the test with knitting needles engaged so her man might face foreign nights in a warm English vest.

She was knitting still when the telegram came 

it said little:

Black edging and a name. And though a peace of kinds arrived the following year, it was said that peace did little to warm the cold corners of Granny's bed.

                    Only today, in the turning of another life,   

                    does one small drawer of things

                    reveal how widow was ounce a wife:

                   a ring, some trinkets

                   and a woolly vest, never worn,

                   that lost its heart to a Flanders dawn.

                                   Peter Cundall

       Marcelo Soares

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