Shuffle, shuffling into the sunlight,
words spoken from decades ago
a muffled ‘behave’ under a drug-constricted lip,
here you are, wrinkled bardette.
Talking through a cough
nurtured over decades,
you gurgle like a pigeon
on a crowded square,
and niggle about missing books
gathered like bibles in your mind.
Red spiders pepper
the plastic table in the dying sun,
as you top another butt
into your cardigan pocket
so riddled with holes now,
like a Swiss cheese.
You regale away
as phantom bonds take shape
in your imaginary space
and delude you from
That Other Place.
You won’t face it again, you said.
back home to the rotting wood with you
so you can die with the ghosts
that you played with last century.
We’ll see.
Tell me another story
and touch your feet on the earth
with the toe you just got done.
Top of a pyramid of three.
You, me and my mammy.
Down here I put this time,
your shape etching itself onto a canvas
for days when clouds will call
Sonja Broderick
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/old-poetess/
