Posted in Truth

Unadorned

Posted on by tq1695

No one would have called her pretty
rumpled face
high forehead
wire wool hair of implausible colour
and tongue sharpened on two ex-husbands.

Her name was of a well-known flower
no scent or petals
only thorns
maybe it was winter in her life
and
a patient gardener prune for spring.

People said she was witty
had been a prankster in faded years
fifty-seven
seeming ninety five
to a twenty two-year-old.

Her workday appeared to consist of solving crosswords.
many years later I came to appreciate
this strange honesty.
No subterfuge or pretence
the passive tools of defiance openly visible
a book of puzzles, a dictionary, scrap paper. Refreshing.

Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.